Urban Forest Planning … (Occy Bonanza, Nia Kurniasih Pontoh, Bagas Dwipantara Putra) 47 URBAN FOREST PLANNING IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF BANDUNG Occy BONANZA, Nia Kurniasih PONTOH, Bagas Dwipantara PUTRA Institute of Technology Bandung Ganesha Street 10, Bandung 40132 Indonesia Website: www.itb.ac.id Abstract Urban Forest is an alternative solution to overcome the floods and micro-climate problems in the eastern Bandung municipality area, i.e. Gedebage Development Area (GDA). Furthermore, the urban forest can provide comforts for people in Gedebage area particularly and Bandung in general. Urban forest clusters in Bandung municipality is still not much, thus the GDA plan as a second city centre in Bandung (after Alun-alun) will transform it into a dense area. The existence of clustered urban forest should be considered for GDA so that it can survive and sustain. In this research, the focus location is the development of Block D in the GDA as open green space. The open green space is planned in the form of urban forest clusters, based on GDA characteristics, potentials and problems. In addition, based on the analysis, GDA has a major problem on hydrology and microclimate; cluster form can function optimally for this kind of problems. The urban forest space is classified into three zones by its intensity, activity and type of trees used. As for the three zones are: first, core zone with low intensity usage; second, buffer zone with medium intensity usage; and third, use zone with high-intensity usage. This classification is based on the literature review associated with the physical condition Gedebage area itself. Keywords: urban forest, urban planning, Municipality of Bandung, Gedebage Development Area (GDA) INTRODUCTION The Municipality of Bandung is one of the major cities in Indonesia. The increasing development and flow of migration in the past decade can be seen in the rapid growth of the city and population increase. The uncontrolled/ irregular development in Bandung has severe impact to the land use system where most of the urban areas consist of built up area with various functions but very limited green open space. The lack of greenery in urban areas and high density of buildings in city centre will decrease the people‘s comfort in Bandung municipality. The growing population, increase of density in the city centre, as well as the limitation of areas in North Bandung make the urban development in Bandung very challenging. That is why the municipal government will develop a new site for future urban areas in East Bandung, also known as Gedebage Development Area (GDA) to overcome density problem in Centre and North Bandung. Gedebage Development Area (GDA) will be the second city centre in Bandung after Alun-alun. The existing land used in Gedebage will be converted into built up area. According to GDA Master Plan, the total area which will be developed is approximately 712.3 ha consists of residential (29.1%), infrastructure (25.1%) and commercial & services (24.1%). Meanwhile