From Data Collection to Citizenship: Insurgent Planning in a Citizen Science Flood-Monitoring Project in Makassar, Indonesia

This chapter discusses how insurgent citizenship can emerge in traditionally technical realms such as infrastructure planning and risk management. First, we define the relationships between the concepts of infrastructure, planning and citizenship through a brief literature review on citizen participation in infrastructure provision. Then, through a case study of a flood monitoring project conducted under the RISE program, we discuss the value of (i) the participation of local insurgent planners in the development of programs that aim to improve health and wellbeing in the context of informal urbanisation, and (ii) the use of planning approaches that challenge centralised planning by incorporating local volunteers in data-collection and community-based perspectives. Through this case study we present citizen science as a tool for insurgent planning. We critically review and examine findings from a series of interviews with RISE fieldworkers-here seen as insurgent planners-and questionnaires administered with community members. These indicate that the relationship between fieldworkers and communities supported the development of a community-based data collection framework and contributed to community agency and infrastructure design practices. Furthermore, the expanded role of the fieldworkers as insurgent planners, identified through the discussion, suggests that their work in participatory data-collection led to the emergence of insurgent practices within the community. The findings reveal that participatory practices such as the citizen science approach represent new ways for communities to fight for their right to the city and shape their own futures.