Mo Smit

Decentralized water management systems can be a viable solution to the sanitation problems of informal urban areas. To be successful, they have to be tailored to the specific context of an area by using its social and cultural potentials instead of thinking in solely technical system measures. This is shown for the example of Kampung Tamansari, an informal settlement located at a riverbank in Bandung, Indonesia. The area’s water issues relate to problems that occur in many parts of the country’s metropoles, making an exemplary solution approach a possible tool to deal with areas that cannot be connected to a central sewage system. First, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of existing water sources and uses reveals that the current handling of water has a destructive impact on human health and the environment, primarily caused by the lack of save drinking water and contamination by sewage water that is led directly into the river. At the same time, rain water as a clean water so...