The Compact City Concept in Creating Resilient City and Transportation System in Surabaya

The increasing population in Surabaya has expanded the city's areas until its suburbs. In 2000, 2.4 million people lived in the city and this population dramatically increases to be more than 3 million in 2011. The main problem comes from the central activities for the communities which have been centralized in the city center while people move to live outside the city. Commuters with long distances indicated by travel volumes which are bigger in the streets which connect the city center to its suburbs comparing to the streets which connect nodes inside the city have shown the non-resilient city planning which disregards environmental issues. In 2005, the transportation sector already produced 5,480,000 ton of carbon dioxides and contributed 96% from all total emissions in Surabaya.One of the sustainable urban planning concepts which can be adopted to boost the resilience of the Surabaya city is the compact city concept. This concept has been viewed as the solution of the urban sprawl and its derived problems. However, research are needed before implementing this concept in Surabaya because every city has its own characteristics and there is a possibility that Surabaya will have different influences for this concept in reducing its transportation problems.In this paper, the impact of urban compactness in transportation in Surabaya city will be explained. Furthermore, the strategies which can be applied to increase the effect of the compact city concept in transportation will be also described. In order to do so, this paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, the multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were used to measure the urban compactness in Surabaya. There were twelve variables used in this first part which are population density, build up density, residential density, availability of elementary, junior, and senior high school, medical facilities and services, working and recreational areas, and population growth rate and migration rate. Based on these variables, Simokerto, Tandes and Dukuh Pakis were chosen as the representative of compact, middle, and sprawl areas respectively. In these three representative areas, surveys were conducted to identify the effectiveness of compact city in creating resilience city and transportation system. In the compact area, the transportation system already shows sustainable patterns with less motorized and more walking and public transit uses while in the middle and sprawl areas the urban compactness level still have to be increased. In the last part of analysis, triangulation method was used and resulted that in compact area, the urban compactness level needs to be maintained with possible combination with transit oriented development and public transport priority strategies. In the other side, middle and sprawl areas need to increase their compactness level through increasing in density and mixed use points to achieve the resilience city and transportation system.