Everyday Urban Life and the Systematic Erasure of Memory in Depok Lama
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30998/lja.v9i2.3798Keywords:
Depok Lama, Everyday Life, Heritage Governance, Indonesia, Secondary CitiesAbstract
This study investigates how rapid urban transformation produces the systematic erosion of collective memory through the restructuring of everyday urban life in Depok Lama, Indonesia. Moving beyond demolition-centred narratives of heritage loss, the research situates memory erosion within processes of spatial fragmentation, commercial intensification, and governance regimes that prioritise market-driven development over lived cultural continuity. Drawing on theories of collective memory, the production of space, and postcolonial urban governance, the study conceptualises memory loss as a structurally embedded outcome of contemporary urban restructuring. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, data were collected through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, memory mapping, morphological analysis, and archival research. The findings reveal that incremental subdivision, infrastructural expansion, and the commodification of neighbourhood space have progressively reduced access to communal infrastructures, weakened intergenerational interaction, and destabilised place-based identity. Heritage decline in Depok Lama is therefore not primarily material, but socio-spatial. Although residents continue to enact adaptive practices and forms of micro-resistance to sustain fragments of collective identity, these practices remain precarious without institutional recognition. The study argues that urban memory erosion in secondary cities should be understood as a governance condition rather than a transitional side effect of modernisation. By repositioning everyday life at the centre of heritage discourse, this research contributes to critical debates on urban memory, socio-spatial justice, and inclusive development in rapidly urbanising contexts.
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