Unfolding Process-Based Indicators: Linking Participation, Perceived Ownership, and Stewardship Practice to Public Space Sustainability: Reflections from Neighbourhood-scale Public Spaces in Surakarta and Banjarmasin, Indonesia

Abstract

This paper examines how community-centric design processes influence the sustainability of neighbourhood-scale public spaces through the lens of perceived ownership and stewardship practices. While participatory approaches are widely promoted in public space development, their contribution to the long-term maintenance and care that contribute to the sustainability of the space remains insufficiently discussed. Building on insights from ‘collective ownership’ literature that links perceived ownership to stewardship behaviours in shared environments, the study investigates how these dynamics unfold in practice. Drawing on two neighbourhood-scale public space projects co-designed with local communities in Indonesia, Sungai Jingah (Banjarmasin, 2012) and Mangkubumen (Surakarta, 2022), the paper explores how participatory processes that were designed to facilitate community aspirations and build ownership are translated into patterns of use, social inclusion, and maintenance. The paper adopts qualitative, practice-based research approaches, combining in-depth semi-structured interviews with reflective process, field observations and project archives on impact assessments. The findings show that community-centric design contributes most to the usership and inclusivity of the space, ensuring that the design of spaces reflects the needs of the user. Although the participatory process facilitates the emergence of ownership and stewardship practice, the result is highly context dependent. Ownership and stewardship practice does not automatically emerge from participation but develops through a combination of various factors such as interest, control over the space, attachment and familiarity, and investments, mediated by factors such as tenure stability, social cohesion, governance arrangements, and access to resources. While stewardship practices emerge through community initiative, their continuity often depends on larger institutional support. This paper proposed a process-based evaluation framework that not only focuses on the design process of the space but also covers aspects that nurture the sustainability of the space, particularly by facilitating the ownership building and stewardship practices that contribute to the sustainability of small-scale public spaces.