In 2018, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency kicked off Water as Leverage, a program aiming to bring water-based solutions to address climate and urban risk in three Southeast Asian cities: Chennai, Khulna, and Semarang. The ‘ONE Resilient Semarang’ team - a group of designers, engineers, economists, ecologists, art activists, and academics - was tasked with developing design-driven, bankable project ideas following an initial phase of research, analysis, stakeholder engagement, and on-the-ground coalition-building with agencies and institutions. In this presentation, members of four partnered organizations on ONE Resilient Team (One Architecture & Urbanism, Kota Kita, Deltares, and Wetlands International) will bring multidisciplinary perspectives to Semarang’s current catch-22: it is a city economically dependent on the same extractive coastal industries that exacerbate its subsidence and flood risk, projected for even more drastic urban densification and economic expansion in the coming years. Instead of developing one-off infrastructure proposals for the city, ONE Resilient Team instead chose a more holistic approach centered around a widespread reorientation of water use across the entire city, from coast to upland, from Kendal to Demak - altogether comprised of potentially hundreds of projects. The embedded goal is to address challenges in a programmatic manner, potentially sparking transformational, bottom-up and top-down change in processes and governance. With the combined disciplines of urban design, community-based planning, water / coastal engineering, and ecological restoration, ONE Resilient Team’s conceptual proposal aims to find integrated solutions to the combined water related risks of climate change and socio-economic growth by drawing from expertise across sectors and backgrounds from across the globe. This presentation will seek to address these issues through the prism of four disciplines among many more represented within the team, asking how resilience can operate beyond an individual project as a guiding development principle for climate-vulnerable cities and landscapes.

Water as Leverage, a flagship project headed up by Henk Ovink, the Dutch Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, challenged teams from across the globe to develop bankable, implementable, and water-centric solutions to urban and climate challenges in three cities across Southeast Asia: Khulna, Chennai, and Semarang. In this group panel discussion, the organizers of the competition from an entrepreneurial branch of the Dutch government - the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) - will be joined by members of the two international design teams developing water-centric solutions to urban climate challenges in Semarang, Indonesia, as well as members of Semarang’s municipal planning department, BAPPEDA. Approaching the competition from three angles - the client, the contractors, and the stakeholder - this panel aims to dissect the process structuring international resilience services and the measures taken to ensure its goals align with those of its benefactors. The panel will also offer multi-sectoral insight into the risks faced by Semarang as a microcosm of climate risk throughout Southeast Asia at large, a global region facing a disproportionate brunt of urban flooding, typhoons, and other climate-fueled events. Both teams, having recently secured the support of both Semarang mayor Hendrar Prihadi and BAPPEDA, are at a turning point in the competition, questioning how to transition such large-scale conceptual design ideals into bankable projects across the City. This panel will also serve as a crash course and investigation into how such complex projects can be advanced within the existing frameworks for risk reduction in Indonesia. A key theme in this conversation will hone in on process as much as product. How such resilience competitions are structured often determines the relationships built with key stakeholders, which in turn may influence the direction of implementation, bankability, and other factors critical to project success - factors which RVO organizers foregrounded in the original call for submissions. Acknowledging this advancement since past iterations of the resilience competition in the US (Rebuild By Design in New York and Resilient By Design in the Bay Area), team members will discuss how this process can be even further re-geared to maximize end value for Semarang, its inhabitants, and its long-term livability and economic growth. PLEASE NOTE: Panelists would include the following individuals to be confirmed: Barry Beagen, Kota Kita (TBC), barry@kotakita.org Olaf Gerson, MLA+ (TBC), Olaf.Gerson@mlaplus.com Wiwindari Handayani, UNDIP (TBC) Robert Proos / RVO (TBC), Robert.Proos@rvo.nl Mas Lufthi / BAPPEDA (TBC)