Common Grounds Reclaiming Space, Agency and Tenure for Jakarta’s Kampung Community

In Jakarta, land is scarce and highly commodified, often sparking disputes rooted in colonial legal systems. The negatief stelsel (claims valid unless contested) and domeinverklaring (unregistered land as state property) remain central to land governance in Indonesia. The postcolonial state reproduces these frameworks, sustaining colonial notions of private property. Decades of Indigenous advocacy have led to limited legal recognition of communal land rights (hak komunal), expanded in 2016 to include forest-dependent communities beyond customary groups. This project imagines a further step: could urban spaces like Jakarta’s kampung also be granted collective tenure, extending communal rights into the city’s fabric? This project explores the legal, spatial, and communal infrastructures necessary to support common ownership in fragmented, untenured areas. It imagines what a communally owned plot might look like—blending spaces for living with those for collective use. Deploying the kampung as a case study, the project reimagines it not as an antithesis to urban development, but as a potential site for granting inhabitants the right to the city.