The Process of Collaboration in Regulating Street Vendors in Bandung City

Abstract

The development of the city of Bandung, as a service and trade centre in the province of West Java, Indonesia, is experiencing problems with the complexity of urban planning, including congestion and a slum environment, one of which is street vendors (abbreviated in Indonesian as Pedagang Kaki Lima/PKL). Street vendors in the city of Bandung grow and develop, followed by process of changing economic and social characteristics. Street vendors, basically the informal sector, are slowly shifting as if to become the formal sector with considerable capital support and more robust economic and social networks. On the one hand, the existence of street vendors acts as a driving force for the small-scale urban economy, but on the other hand, it appears as a cause of urban chaos. To overcome this problem, the Bandung City Government, through a special task force (which in Indonesian is called Satgasus PKL), involves street vendors associations to work together in structuring street vendors in Bandung City. This study aims to explain how the task force as a policy maker provides space for street vendors as beneficiaries by collaborating to solve urban problems and obstacles and challenges. The indicator used is the collaboration process between organizations by Huxham and Sev Vangen (1996). There are six processes: managing aims, compromise, communication, democracy and equality, power and trust, determination, commitment, and stamina. This study uses qualitative methods obtained through observation, literature review, and in-depth interviews. The results show that the open public space has not been optimally utilized by the task force and street vendors to solve the problem of structuring street vendors in the city of Bandung. Due to differences in motivation and orientation in structuring objectives, the dominance of the task force in the division of roles, communication barriers, distrust between the two parties, and low endurance to continue to collaborate.