The Re-Designing of Responsive Coastal Settlement toward Tropical Climate (A Case Study: Semarang City Coastal Settlement)

Abstract

Parallel to global warming, sea level arises every year, especially in the last 10 years, which impacts the coastal settlement areas. One of the impacts is the emergence of high tide flood in the areas of coastal settlements in Semarang City, which even in the last 5 years has reached 2 kilometers into the land from the coastline. High tide flood becomes a very disturbing problem to people's activities, not only the social-economic problems it creates but also environmental problems, especially sanitation and health problems. Besides the problem of high tide flood, there are still a few of people thinking of coastal city settlements with building physical finishing that orientate towards tropical climate. People living in coastal settlements need to be taken back to the local wisdom in building their houses that have environmental insights and, at the same time, saving energy. Particularly, Indonesian societies, especially those living in the coastal settlement areas, have had the capital of the traditional house structures suitable to the tropical climate. Hopefully, redesigning coastal city settlements especially in Semarang City becomes a very important matter for the anticipation of global warming impacts and, at the same time, to be responsive to the tropical climate. Redesigning does not produce only the models of house designs and their environment but also produces the efficient and affordable provisioning models, either by the government or private companies, and also the guiding models for the empowerment of coastal settlement societies, whether they are conducted by universities or social self-supporting institutions.