Thomas Karsten - Town Planning

Town Planning

Several cities in Java and Sumatra underwent major renovation plans following the Dutch governments' early twentieth century introduction of the Ethical Policy. A new Decentralisation Act (Decentralitatiewet) was enacted in 1903 that enabled local municipalities and regional governments to develop and to plan their own territory. Most northern coastal towns of Java had to deal with unrelenting population increases, and a subsequent huge demand for houses and infrastructures, sanitation, and other related development. Thomas Karsten saw himself as being at the right time with the town planning of Semarang in 1914 by working at Henry Maclaine's architecture firm.

In colonialism, all social components are expressed through the articulation of the 'form of difference', and the colonial urban planning was precisely implemented by the order of relationship between various ethnically, racially and economically urban dwellers. Karsten rejected this idea and began to include more indigenous elements intertwined with those typical European elements. In 1917, he presented the 'New Candi' plan, an extension plan of the Semarang's master plan to accommodate all ethnic groups according to their own habits. He produced a master plan for new suburbs in Batavia including the central city square.

In 1921, Thomas Karsten presented a paper of the Indies Town Planning at the Decentralisation Congress. The paper was seen of a new radical idea in which Karsten argued that a town planning is an activity of interconnected components (social, technology, etc.) that is needed to be addressed harmoniously. His idea for a methodological approach to create an organic town plan with a social dimension received much acclaim in the colony, as well as in the Netherlands.

Karsten's paper gave major influence in the government plan for public housing. Among them were the municipal guidelines for urban extension and housing (1926), municipal priority rights on land (1926) and the provision of up to 50% of subsidies and guidelines for kampong (villages) improvement projects (1928). In 1930, Thomas Karsten together with other prominent architects, politicians and bureaucrats in the colony was appointed by the government to the Town Planning Committee. The committee produced a draft of Town Planning Ordinance in 1938 for the town planning regulations to organise buildings and construction in accordance with social and geographical characteristics and their expected growth. The plan was put on hold because of World War II and was never realized after which the Dutch lost their control over Indonesia.