UNAIR NEWS – City attractiveness is the cause of urbanization in Indonesia. It due to a lack of employment in rural areas and encourage people to move to urban areas.
The problem became an opportunity for Fariz Ilham Rosyidi and Mega Pertiwi. Two students, from History Studies of Faculty of Humanities (FIB) and Faculty of Psychology (FPsi) Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR) provided a solution in the form of tourism village optimization through digitization as a solution for urbanization problem in Adat Kemiren Village, Banyuwangi.
The solution received a warm reception at 2019 ASEAN Youth Conference (AYC) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on October 12-13. As UNAIR representatives, they were able to present their research results well.
One of the representatives, Fariz revealed the purpose of raising digital optimization at Adat Kemiren Village is the potential of its place. He saw the local population, especially young people (Kemiren Village, ed) was quite promising.
According to Fariz, the tourist attraction of Kemiren Village, which is well known to locals and even foreigners is an asset of the village’s economic development.
“Digital optimization such as lodging and tourist areas with applications can increase people’s income,” he said.
He also revealed data compiled from BPS that Indonesia is one of the countries in Asia with the highest level of urbanization. It is estimated that in 2025, people who live in urban areas will reach 60 percent.
The government set budgeting village funds of 1 billion annually. But the policy has not been entirely successful because it only targets infrastructure development and has not developed human resources independently.
The ideas he presented at AYC also aimed at suppressing urbanization through piloting digital tourism villages. The digital tourism village pilot, according to him, is a place for economic development that is equitable with local wisdom through digital tourism promotion platforms.
He hoped the ideas could provide feedback for government in realizing an integrated tourism village with digitization between regions. In the long-term development, the village economy will be independent and become a world model as expected by the government. (*)
Author: Aditya Novrian
Editor: Khefti Almawalia
