Chinese inner-city kampung’s spatial pattern transformation in colonial and post-colonial Semarang

The ex-colonial part of Semarang hosts a significant population of the Chinese Indonesian community (descendants of Chinese migrants). They live in an area (Chinatown and the adjacent neighborhood) designated by the colonial government. Since colonial times, the Chinese Indonesian community has played an essential role in economic activities and acted as intermediate merchants between the Dutch and the indigenous. The Chinese Indonesians benefited from agrarian law during colonial times and controlled vast lands in Semarang. For the diaspora, being and becoming local in the new home requires shifting and negotiation of identities, as identity is linked to home. An ethnic enclave, where the diaspora lives, thus becomes a symbolic representation of home, where they produce a hybrid characteristic of a place that reflects their home country and their host country. In the case of the Chinese diaspora in Semarang, their ethnic enclaves consist not only of Chinatown. This article examines the spatial pattern of inner-city kampung, which was owned by Chinese landlords and inhabited by Chinese Indonesians. The spatial maps of three kampungs were analyzed, along with the discussion about the agrarian statutes and how the Chinese Indonesian landlords created their own kampung. Findings suggest that the agrarian laws, Chinese culture, and the Chinese concept of space influenced the spatial pattern of some inner-city kampungs in Semarang.