As the urban population growth accelerates, Jakarta is experiencing severe housing shortage. This condition breeds slum settlement as solutions to provide affordable shelters for the under privileged. Due to all disadvantages, the slum residents constitute informal area management for governing self-help housing and basic services. Our research area is located in Cikini Kramat area, Central Jakarta. It is a high-density slum settlement where 5.000 people reside in 4 hectares coverage area. This research aims to clarify the failure of land titling program and to reveal the existence of informal area management and building control.

The research occurred simultaneously with our participation in public facilities provision with the Cikini Kramat Area community since 2011. We applied Participatory Action Research integrated with Participatory Design Method to discover what kind of informal management and which project stage would be discussed during the process. We held interviews to 10 (ten) local leaders to validate the information about the history and the informal area management. As for the land and building ownership, we interviewed 63 respondents