Local Elements Defining Transitional Spaces as a Territorial Strategy at an Urban Village in the City of Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

Urban villages, known as kampungs in Yogyakarta, are currently experiencing a gradual decline in providing social space due to their spatial transformation to support tourism, including Prawirotaman. Prawirotaman had been a neighbourhood for the Sultan’s soldiers in the 19th century; it was later transformed into a kampung for tourists in the 1980s. This transformation affected the territorial claims of the transitional spaces. In contrast, the transitional spaces in Prawirotaman have now become gathering spaces accommodating the daily neighbourly lives. Hence, this study aimed to define transitional space through its local elements relating to the residents’ territorial behaviour towards the spatial transformation due to tourism. The data consisted of residents’ interaction behaviours and physical settings collected from interviews and observations using GPS and manual drawing. The analysis uses behaviour mapping and spatial configuration approaches assisted by ArcGIS and SketchUp. The observations were conducted based on the Muslim daily prayer times. This research defines that the transitional space becomes a residents' territorial strategy in maintaining their social space amid the transformation due to tourism through their behaviour in using and placing local elements.