Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

PREFERENCES FOR SETTLEMENT IMPROVEMENT IN URBANRIPARIAN INDONESIA

Maya Fitri1, SugengTriyadi and Ismet B. Harun

Abstract

Many cities in Indonesia arise along the riparian. Riparian provides food and water resources, natural air and lighting, and sanitation needs. Living in riparian is predominant part of the city history and still a part of the current city’s status. Riparian is a wetland along a river bank. It has an important function of ecosystem services. Riparian is an area for purification, absorption, and reservoir of water. However, due to rapid city development has caused many urban in riparian turn into developed areas. Since the riparian is covered by buildings, the ability in providing the ecosystem services is disturbed. The city development needs to improve the settlement in riparian with the planning to restore the riparian ecosystem services. This study focuses on resident’s preferences for the settlement improvements. The stated preference method was used in this study. The total of 155 respondents who live in the settlement along the Musi River in Palembang,Indonesia were required to rank several settlement profiles. Each profile was composed on five attributes that directly influence riparian ecosystem service. The results showed that the building attributes get enormous the resident’s attention, while the environment attributes almost do not get any attention.Accordingly, the planning settlement in the riparian can be optimized by modifying the environmental attributes according to the ecological criteria and the building attribute according to the preference criteria.This study finding is valuable information to formulate a planning in urban riparian areas through the social understanding.