Diversity and Opportunity in a Good City Making, Learning from Informal Settlement in Yogyakarta-Indonesia Muhammad Nelza Mulki Iqbal Muhammad Nelza Mulki Iqbal, ST, Indonesian Endowment Fund For Education, Abstract The Greek thinker Aristotle ever tried to explain cities phenomenon by mentioning that a good life can be founded in the togetherness of city living. Nevertheless, today’s fact there is no city has ever meant the good life for all its inhabitants. It becomes harder and harder to define a good life inside the city, as well as looking what makes a good city in current perspective. Cities are now seen at best as a great social problem and at worst as utopian city solution that yet never come. That makes sense that the concept of making good city is debatable, and somehow it is very subjective. Starting with an explanation of the period when a good city notion emerged, this essay will try to analyze in a very brief manner the discourses between physical and non- physical strategies to develop a good city notion. Afterwards, it will be extended to the role of opportunity to build a future good city. The opportunity will be in line with the concept of the right to the city, which originally based on Henri Lefebvre’s Theory (Lefebvre, 1996). Staying back to the musing between what is good and what is bad, this essay is trying to investigate what is reasoning behind good or bad and how to solve it. Then, it will be navigated to how people can deal with the bad condition of the city and solving their problem as a part of their right. The notions of a good city, however, belong to the residents. What city needs the most was a most intricate and close-grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual supports (Jacobs, 1961). The cases of Kampung Code in Yogyakarta, which was the winner of Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1992 will be highlighted to be an example of how people are dealing with their bad condition, struggling on their right and taking the opportunity given. Between Physical and Non-Physical Strategies The long history of making a good city has been emerged since the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century. These discourses related to the bad city condition in European and Northern American society including mental and physical (Fainstein, 2000). It then raised planner as a visionary expert to envision future good city. They believed that notion about the good city could be taken from imagining ideal city through its physical regularity, neatness, and beautify of the city. For “professionals and expertise”, it was urgent to make a new order of the city to come up with all social conflicts and miseries. Reformation of physical environment was believed to solve city and life society problems (Fishman, 1996). The earliest era of planning activity towards the prospecting good city was guided by determinism of physical environment philosophy. Its subject matters designed city, parks, boulevards, and new settlements, among others.