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Abstract

Traditional markets are essential socio-cultural infrastructures in heritage cities, shaping everyday interactions, economic life, and collective memory. In Surakarta, four historic markets—Pasar Gede, Pasar Klewer, Pasar Legi, and Pasar Triwindu—sustain the city’s urban identity. However, rapid modernization, commercial restructuring, and shifting consumer behavior have disrupted their spatial and symbolic continuity, raising concerns about the erosion of cultural meaning. Previous studies examined traditional markets mainly from economic or architectural perspectives, rarely exploring how their multidimensional identity evolves under urban transformation. This study investigates how spatial, social, symbolic, and environmental dimensions collectively shape market-based authenticity and the urban identity of Surakarta. A mixed-methods approach combined qualitative inquiry, quantitative perception analysis, and spatial observation. Environmental evidence was gathered through systematic observational assessment—photographic survey, sketch mapping, walk-through field logs, and re-coding of 24 in-depth interviews (traders, visitors, community leaders, planners, and officials) using a microclimate/thermal-experience codebook; instrumental environmental measurement was beyond the study’s scope and is identified as future work. Findings show that despite modernization pressures, spatial configuration, embodied social practices, and symbolic meanings remain strongly interlinked, reinforcing market identity. Observational evidence—passive cooling along Pasar Triwindu’s ventilation corridor, shaded arcades at Pasar Gede, reuse and short-loop supply practices, and locally embedded goods networks—interacts with and reinforces the spatial, social, and symbolic dimensions of authenticity. Recoded interviews show that users explicitly link the bodily experience of coolness and shade with authenticity and place attachment. The study refines the Authenticity-Driven Placemaking (ADPM) framework by integrating spatial, social, symbolic, and environmental dimensions as four parallel, mutually reinforcing layers to guide revitalization. These insights highlight traditional markets as dynamic cultural-ecological systems for sustaining Surakarta’s heritage-based urban future.

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