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URBAN INNOVATION CHALLENGE FOSTERS COLLECTIVE ACTION IN BUILDING

RESILIENT CITIES

Urban Innovation Challenge

Fosters Collective Action in
Building Resilient Cities
MAY 17, 2022

Authors
MUHAMMAD DIDI HARDIANA
Head of Innovative Financing Lab, UNDP Indonesia

RANJIT JOSE
Communications and Advocacy Specialist, UNDP Indonesia
 Indonesia is among the many countries with high
Indonesia urbanization rates at an estimated growth rate of
4.1 percent per year. (Andreas H/Shutterstock)

Cities across the globe are prone to various hazards and

environmental degradation caused by climate change or
the inability to manage the environment. Indonesia is
among the many countries with high urbanization rates at
an estimated growth rate of 4.1 percent per year. With the
threat of climate change, Indonesia, which sits on the so-
called Pacific Ring of Fire, is especially vulnerable to
natural disasters, including floods, hurricanes, and rising
sea levels. Research by global risk consulting firm Verisk
Maplecroft shows that three cities in Indonesia, Jakarta,
Surabaya, and Bandung, are among the ten cities with
the highest environmental risks globally. These
conditions might impact our lives and create disturbance
or setbacks in achieving sustainable development.

Opportunities to build
resilient cities
Before we go any further, we should understand the
relationship between human life and the earth to create a
resilient city from various hazards and environmental
degradation. Our need for constant socio-economic
development coupled with nature's unpredictability may
have created these hazards in the first place. This starts
from realizing that in the Anthropocene era, we, as
humans, play an essential role in the process of change
and transformation and have had such a significant
impact on the earth and its habitants that we will have a
lasting—and potentially irreversible—influence on its
systems, environment, process, and biodiversity as well
as mitigating the impact of development on the earth. It
would be wise if the grassroots communities, including
vulnerable members, should be the ones that act to
alleviate their daily problems, to be the agencies of
sustainable development for their own sake.
 In building resilience, grassroots communities need to
Indonesia collaborate among themselves or with external agencies
to transform their social and economic processes. This
inclusive transformation process implemented with the
stewardship of nature principle will create a resilient
community as the building block of a resilient city.
Together with a strong sense of community rooted in
Indonesian values, these different actors and
stakeholders can innovate as they build a resilient city to
improve the well-being of the urban community toward a
sustainable future.

Urban Innovation Challenge:

Co-create Grassroots
Innovations
UNDP Accelerator Lab Indonesia, together with our main
partners, the National Research and Innovation Agency
(BRIN) and Ecoxyztem Venture Builder, organized "Urban
Innovation Challenge (UIC)," a program to crowdsource
grassroots solutions and encourage the co-creation of
social innovation to solve urban development problems
faced by grassroots communities. The program called for
grassroots solutions through three main themes: Smart
Cities, Waste Management, and MSMEs & Digitalization.
These topics are closely related to problems in urban
areas and are essential elements in building a resilient
city.

The program journey began with a public call for

innovations where we received many exciting solutions
from 118 teams coming from various cities in Indonesia.
Through a rigorous and gender-responsive selection
process, 11 teams were invited to participate in an online
boot camp consisting of intensive workshops and
mentoring from experts and practitioners with a strong
background in urban issues. Over the period of one
month, they joined a comprehensive learning process on
portfolio design, systemic thinking, immersion method,
and the culture of social innovation so that they can do
social mapping and measure their impacts. They are
involved in a collaborative process with experts,
 practitioners, and other participants by using practical
Indonesia technical tools and methods that will help them sharpen
and communicate their ideas. Furthermore, they also
learned about effective proposal writing techniques and
communicative and attractive presentations.

The teams developed proposals and presented their

innovative solutions at a Demo Day in a hybrid event.
Following evaluation of their proposals and
presentations, including substance, impact, and
management, three teams with the best innovations were
selected per category. CEGAS Studio with Participatory
Smart Urban Resilience, an open incubation and
collaboration digital space between the community and
the government for inclusive disaster management in
Slawi City, Central Java. FOKKALIS offers an innovative
solution to prevent food loss and waste in Kramat Jati,
Jakarta, collaborating with fruit tenants and empowering
local communities. Sayur Sleman brings digitalization of
local fresh market to increase social and economic
impact in Yogyakarta. This year, these teams are
prototyping their innovative solutions over six months
with support from UNDP Accelerator Lab and UNDP
Restore project.
Indonesia

The Urban Innovation Challenge activities ended

with a Demo Day, where 11
communities/organizations showcased their
innovations before the judges and to the general
public. (Internal Documentation)

The Urban Innovation Challenge provided a platform for

multi-stakeholder collaboration, particularly in grassroots
communities. It is expected that similar collaborations will
continue to contribute to solving urban development
problems by fostering innovation, harnessing and scaling
up grassroots solutions, and collaborating with affected
communities to become more resilient and create a
lasting impact.

Written by:

Muhammad Didi Hardiana, Head of Experimentation

UNDP Accelerator Lab Indonesia

Ratna Ningrum Sudaryo, Partnership & Community

Manager of Ecoxyztem.

Edited by:

Ranjit Jose
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