EXPLORING SENSE OF PLACE FOR THE SUSTAINABILITY OF HERITAGE DISTRICT IN YOGYAKARTA

Yogyakarta is well-known as a historical city and the centre of Javanese culture that attracts many tourists to come. In recent year, Yogyakarta has been very popular to domestic and international tourists in that many heritage places in the city have been developed to distinctive tourist destinations, yet no reasonable criteria has been developed to guide its development. This study assumed that places with distinctive identity or character or uniqueness are the most interested object of attraction for tourists. Therefore, the study will explore the sense of place as the important success factor in sustaining a heritage place as tourist attraction and identify aspects of a place that might contribute to its sustainability. Two heritage districts: Kotagede and Kotabaru are selected for evaluating aspects of place that are significantly contributing to the historical and cultural image of the city of Yogyakarta. The study identify and analyze the existing condition of physical attributes, performed activities and conception of the place. Indicators being used are developed from the current research undertaken by geographer and environmental psychologist. The study resulted to the conclusion that an interconnection of many aspects rather than identity of the place is the critical factor for the sustainability of a heritage place.


INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, rapid development in urban area challenges local authenticity for distinctive and valued places to sustain cultural, social, and economic network.Consequently, heritage conservation has became an imperative effort in placemaking.However, the concept of heritage conservation is complex and varied between generation, professionals, and across time and space.Although there are varying diversity in opinion, there is a common belief that urban development has disrupted the emotional attachment to place, particularly to the heritage places.Urban development should consider not only on restoring authenticity, but it should also maintain a sense of place that reflects a belief embedded within the place as the whole.
The existence of Yogyakarta is closely related to the history of the Islamic Mataram Kingdom.Wardani, Soedarsono, Haryono, and Suryo (2013) explained that Yogyakarta is the last royal city which become the most important center of cultural heritage on the island of Java.Prince Mangkubumi, who had a title Sultan Hamengku Buwana I, built Yogyakarta Palace in 1756.Yogyakarta Palace is the continuation of the Islamic Mataram dynasty.Islamic Mataram Kingdom was founded by Panembahan Senopati in 1586.In the beginning, the center of Islamic Mataram Kingdom had moved several times, from Kota Gede , to Kerta (1613Kerta ( -1645)), Plered (1645Plered ( -1677)), and to Kartasura (1682).It had experienced the turnover of the ruling monarch ten times.In the period of Paku Buwana III, as a result of Giyanti agreement, Islamic Mataram Kingdom was divided into two different kingdoms: Yogyakarta and Surakarta.
As a center of Javanese Kingdom, Yogyakarta becomes a centre of Javanese culture.For several decades, it attracts many people to come, whether people from other regions in Indonesia or form other countries, fascinated by the uniqueness of Javanese culture.Supported by physical heritage architecture and related activities which reminiscent past memories, heritage places might develop into distinctive tourist destinations.This study is derived from the assumption that places with distinctive character are the most interested object of attraction for tourism.The aim of this study is exploring the sense of place as the important factor in sustaining a heritage place as tourist attraction and identify aspects of a place that might contribute to its sustainability.

THEORY / RESEARCH METHODS
This study is a comparative study of two heritage districts: Kotagede and Kotabaru.Both of them have historical and cultural image of the city of Yogyakarta.However, they have significantly different time era in history and different response in terms of conserving cultural and historical values.Kotagede was the former capital of the old Islamic Mataram Kingdom, whereas Kotabaru was the residential area of Dutch officials.Kotagede still reflects the components of the Mataram Kingdom and mostly supports the living of local settlements.The living of Islamic culture community, which is a non-physical cultural asset, is still preserved.Meanwhile, Kotabaru located at the center of the modern urban life.Besides residential areas, it accomodates offices, public facilities, and commercial bussiness activities, such as governmental offices, banking offices, shopping malls, stores, cafes, hospitals, railway stations, educational facilities, sports facilities, and religious facilities.The physical cultural assets in the forms of building complexes and single-detached building from Dutch Colonial era are the main assets ini Kotabaru.Changes in building functions to accomodate modern living styles often give impacts on building appearance.Kotabaru has an adaptive response to the recent urban lifestyles.
Indicators of comparison developed from the previous research undertaken by geographers and environmental psychologists.In the early 1970s, humanistics geographers such as Tuan (1974), Buttimer (1976), andRelph (1976) developed definitions of place.They probed place as an integral part of human experience.Tuan (1974) mentioned the term of topophilia as the affective bond between people and place or setting in experiencing place.Such ties may varied in intensity, subtlety, and mode of expression.Responses to the environment may be aesthetic, tactile, or emotional.Buttimer (1976) described that phenomenological descriptions has remained vague to the functional dynamism of spatial systems, just as geographical descriptions of space have desolated many facet of human experience.She suggested dialogue between two disciplines in three major research areas: the sense of place, social space, and time-space rhythms.Relph (1976) used a phenomenology of place as a research method to interpretive human experience.Relph recalled unquestioned and taken-for-granted nature of place and its significance as an obvious dimension that can not be ignored in human life and experience.He emphasizes that in studying the relationship of space to a more experientially-based understanding of place, space must be explored in terms of how people experience it.He describes persistence identity of place in terms of three components: the place's physical setting; its activities, situations, and events; and the individual and group meanings created through people's experiences and intentions concerning to that place.Furthermore, he defines the concept of insideness as the core lived structure of place as it has meaning in human life.It includes the degree of attachment, involvement, and concern that the people has for a particular place.Then, places are more thoroughly understood as we can identify particular place experience in terms of the intensity of meaning and intention that a people and place hold for each other.
Farrinelli ( 2003), an Italian geographer, in Agnew (2011) explains two perspectives in understanding place.Place as a part of terrestrial surface is a distinctive entity.It cannot be subtituted with any other without everything changing.Whereas place as a location (space), its part can be subtituted for another without anything being changed.An environmental psychologist, Canter (1977) explored the idea of place.He indicates that a place is a result of relationships between actions, conceptions, and physical attributes.A place can be identified by understanding the behaviour which is associated with or anticipated in a given locus, the physical parameters of that setting, and the description or conceptions which people hold of that behaviour in that physical environment.The notion that those three elements are embodied in particular place is supported by Uzzell, Pol, and Badenes (2002), Shamsuddin and Ujang (2008), Shamsuddin et al. (2011), andVali andNasekhiyan (2014).Montgomery (1998) added that people will combine physical forms, activities, and images in experiencing urban places to construct sense of place.Relph (1976) in Shamai (1991) emphasizes that the essence of place can be revealed through experiencing place.Creating a sense of place is not just merely from condition of the location, but there is also need for a long and deep experience of a place.Involvement in the place through ritual, myths, and symbols can be helpful in strengthening the attachment to place.Shamai (1991) mentioned that symbols of local culture reflect and enhance sense of place.Shamai (1991) qoutes Datel and Dingemans (1984) who defined sense of place as the complex bundle of meanings, symbols, and qualities that a person or group associates with a particular locality or region, consciously and unconsciously.Experiencing places is felt through all of the human senses, such as sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.Therefore, the place experience is a total sensorial experience.A place is not only the object, but also part of the whole that can be felt through the actual experience of meaningful events.The study identifies and analyzes the existing condition of physical attributes, performed activities and conception of the place as indicators of place.

Case Study: Kotagede and Kotabaru
According to Yogyakarta Municipality in cooperation with Regional Development and Poverty Reduction Program ( 2005), there are five cultural areas in Yogyakarta which have physical cultural heritage: Kotabaru, Kotagede, Kraton, Malioboro, and Puro Pakualaman (Figure 1).In this study, Kotagede and Kotabaru are selected for evaluating aspects of place that are significantly contributing to the historical and cultural image of the city of Yogyakarta.Kotabaru was the residential area of Dutch officials.In colonial era, this region was specifically inhabited by the Dutch.Today, sub-district of Kotabaru is located in Gondokusuman District at northeast side of city center of Yogyakarta (Figure 4).Kotabaru region has potential assets to be developed as tourism destination, including the image of tropical Indisch architecture, boulevard with shady vegetation, public open spaces which have a function as sports stadium, and public buildings such as railway station, hospitals, schools, offices, bakery, cafés, restaurants, stores and shopping center.Figure 5 shows the radial concentric of the street patterns which make the access from one place to another places easier.

Kotagede
According to Jogja Heritage Society ( 2001), historical and cultural values of Kotagede Heritage District are reflected in the architecture of its houses and the social life of its people.

Physical attributes
Figure 3 explains the location of heritage sites related to the components of capital of the old Islamic Mataram Kingdom.There is a traditional market, Pasar Gede, which was built by Panembahan Senopati.At the south of Pasar Gede, there is a gate and long fort to protect the heritage site.Passing through the second gate, there is a two-metres high wall with passages on both sites leads to the entrance of The Great Mosque complex.At the center of the complex, there is a Great Mosque (Figure 6) surrounded by the houses of the court servants.
Dinas Kebudayaan Provinsi Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta ( 2009) mentions that the architecture of this mosque adopts Hindu and Buddhist elements.The Great Mosque is also called Masjid Mataram, located at west side of Kampung Alun-alun.This mosque is a sacred place for the Islamic Mataram Kingdom.Its location is integrated with the tomb of the founder of the Old Islamic Mataram Kingdom which is called Pasareyan Agung Kotagede.The area has significant religious and spiritual values.The mosque is a symbol of Islamic influence in hinterland area of Java which was dominated by Hinduism and native beliefs.The Great Mosque as a royal mosque is signified by "mustaka" which is the characteristic of "masjid keprabon".Hinduism character is reflected in the gate and the fences surrounds (Figure 7).The elements of water which surrounded the mosque is the continuation of Hinduism.There are toponyms of Alun-alun and Dalem.Kampung Alun-alun initially was Alun-alun (public open space) of The Mataram Palace, but today it is a settlement (Figure 8).It has been argued that the changes were occurred a long time ago before the lost of the old of Islamic Mataram Kingdom.Kampung Alun-alun is located at the eastern side of The Great Mosque, at the southern side of Pasar Kotagede, and at the northern side of Kampung Dalem.Based on the location, it has been interpreted that Kampung Alun-alun is the former Alun-alun of the old Islamic Mataram Kingdom.
The traditional houses, which were built hundreds years ago, constructed with timber and have the unique carved timber brackets called "bahu dhanyang" (Figure 9).Another significant characteristic is Kalang House.The people of Kalang comes from Bali and have the skills as builders, particularly using wooden materials.The uniqueness of the architecture of Kalang House is it combines Javanese traditional architecture and Indisch architecture, sometimes also uses the Arabian styles.Figure 10 and 11 show Kalang House in Kotagede.Villages (kampung) in Kotagede have narrow alleys between houses and their inhabitants still live in Javanese traditions.In Kotagede, people still preserve and do rituals and traditons.Among several traditions, there are "Ambengan Ageng Kotagede" and "Nawu Sendang Selirang" which involve the whole community in Kotagede."Ambengan Ageng Kotagede" (Picture 12) is a procession which has the aim to alms the crops and traditional foods arranged forming a cone.The alms is prepared by the people to celebrate Islamic religious holidays such as Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha or the village celebration such as cleaning-up the bathing place called nawu Sendang Selirang.There is a procession of Ambengan Ageng from the yard of Jagalan sub-district, passes through Mondorakan Street, surrounds the market, into the yard of The Great Mosque of Mataram.In front of the prosession of Ambengan Ageng, there are miniature of houses with green wall.Inside of those miniature, there are scoops which are made from coconut shell called 'siwur'.These scoops are used for cleaning-up 'sendang' symbolically in the ritual of nawu sendang.After the ritual is done, foods and vegetables inside Ambengan were taken by the people there.Then, they clean-up the bathing place -called sendang selirang-and the moat -called jagang-, together with the court servants.
Ritual and procession of Nawu Sendang Selirang held anually as cultural preservation and remind the people to their culture (Picture 13).Nawu Sendang Selirang means cleaning-up two bathing places which are located at southern side of The Great Mosque.This ceremony is a symbol of self-purification.
Kotagede is also well-known as the center of silver handicraft.The ability to produce silver handicraft is descended by the ancestor to the next generation.At first, handicrafts in Kotagede were made of gold, silver, and copper, but then, silver is most preferred.

Conception of place
Kotagede District has a conception of place as cultural heritage places which attract tourism.People from other countries often visit the center of silver production.Whereas, local tourist tends to do pilgrimage to the Great Mosque (Masjid Mataram) and to the complex of the old Islamic Mataram Kingdom dynasty.

Kotabaru Physical attributes
The obstacles in the conservation of Kotabaru region are demolition and the addition of new buildings which are not in accordance with the image of this region.Figures 14 and 15 display the old buildings which still maintain the original form, while Figure 16 displays the eye clinic which conserves the original appearance, but with modification.Figure 17 shows a new building which still conforms to its surronding area.On the other hand, Figures 18 and 19 reveal new buildings which are not contextual to their surroundings.

Performed activities
There is no specific activities in Kotabaru sub-distric which involve the whole community to remind the people about the relation of present life to the conception of the past.The events or activities usually took place in particular area or buildings.They are conducted for spesific purpose, such as car free day, bazaar, festival, or exhibition.

Conception of place
Kotabaru sub-district is recognized as the region which is characterized by colonial buildings and has boulevards with shady vegetation.However, some buildings seems uncontextual because their appearances do not conform to the surrounding area.

CONCLUSION
The existence of Kotagede District as Heritage Place is strengthen by the livingculture community, heritage sites, heritage buildings, and traditions.Kotabaru subdistrict has several heritage buildings, but lack of integrated activities that can revive the memories of the past or creatively create the connection of conception of place into present life activities.The interconnection of the components of sense of place is important to establish in a heritage place because it is a critical factor for the sustainability of a heritage place.

Figure 14 .Figure 15 .Figure 16 .
Figure 14.The old buildings which still keep the original appearances and functions Source: Survey, 2017