Irian Barat Street Hobby Fish and Collectible Plants Retailers, Surabaya, Indonesia (Master’s Thesis)

Irian Barat Street Riverside; Trade Area

The pictures presented on this page are from my Master’s Thesis entitled Design Analysis of The New Pet Fish Retail Market on Gunungsari Road Surabaya. To be precise, the sketches here are from the fifth and final chapter; Conclusion and Suggestion. They represent my idea on the possibility to bring Irian Barat Street to life with proper street vendor arrangement, and management. Below is my Thesis abstract:

Cities, being income-generating projects, attract people who seek better health care, education, even entertainment. But basically cities attract people because of the opportunities of earning better living than in villages. However, not everyone can make it in cities. Some, who are fortunate enough, are able to seek their fortune in formal public or private establishments, while others have to struggle to maintain their livelihood selling their labor in the informal sector; providing goods and services for others, on the streets. Their lives depend on every transaction for tiny sums that for some make the difference between survival and destitution, and for others provide a profitable trade.

Irian Barat Street; Vehicle Circulation

The informal sector, for cities, present social problems that from time to time has had no concrete solution to. Countless times have urban officials carried out evictions to roadside retailers, but the results are always the same: the retailers return to the same spot they were evicted from as soon as the situation cools down. In relation to the evictions that urban authorities carry out, the lower levels of urban administration that are directly responsible for implementing the harassment as an implication of regulations, are prone to petty corruption as they are among the worst paid. Thus nowadays urban officials in Surabaya resort to relocating and formalizing the informal economy players by centralizing them according to their activities: second-hand book retailer market Kampoeng Ilmoe [Kampong of Knowledge] on Semarang road, bird retailers in Pesapen, and fish retailers on Gunungsari road.

This research is carried out to determine whether the new location proposed to relocate pet fish retailers on Irian Barat Street is suitable for their activities, and whether the proposed design can accommodate the activities conducted by the pet fish retailers. Other than that, this research also aims to generate some suggestions that may be useful in the attempt to control and manage the informal micro-enterprises that occupy parts of Surabaya, especially the ones that occupy Irian Barat Street.

The research method employed in this research is the qualitative approach. In gathering required data and information, on-the-spot observation is done; other information is gathered from analyzing documents including scientific journals, blogs, and publications; interviews; some audio-visual methods are also employed in the data gathering process.

From the analysis, it is concluded that both the design and the new location proposed by the urban authorities for hobby fish retailers are advisable for their activities.