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Kakilima, i.e., generic informal urban economy, has been both urban problems and blessings in Indonesia. They are omnipresent and an ‘eyesore’. They are part of structuration process of the society – in which they are produced and reproduced – including its economy. The research is to disclose economic behaviour and activities in spatial terms. The findings suggest that they are convoluted both in kinds and may embed within the formal one. Keywords windows; illumination level; residential building; occupant’s perception. eISSN 2514-751X © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.

This paper seeks to challenge the dominant paradigm on housing only as an standarized object for living. For the urban poor, urbanity is conceived as petromax that attracts them to come to the city striving for fortune. What really matters is how they could get access to space or “a piece of land” (lahan) in the city,which may not mean it housing let alone home. A house is imagined as a shelter that lets them engage with economic activities within. It does not have all the basic facilities needed to raise a healthy family as understood and believed by politicians, bureaucrats and those in the property business. The research method used in this projects in order to discover the metaphysical phenomena of invisible housing is a grounded method. The idea of invisible housing is uncovered through an emic approach of investigations to the respondents. Findings have shown that the urban poor perceive urbanity as space of existence. Open lahan or open urban land (such as on river bank) perceived as “no man’s land” for them to utilize.

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This study explores housing problem concerning the most widely perceived idea of housing needs that heavily influenced by the technical and macro-scale level as well as the units’ tenure and occupancy which is mainly perceived as owning and renting. On the other hand, the housing cannot be seen as such due to the existence of different context of the problem and the various aspirations of occupants. This research highlights the other kind of occupancy phenomenon among Indonesian who can get access to and live in a housing unit without owning or renting – by living and staying with their relatives. In particular reference to Balikpapan East Kalimantan, this study concerns the modus of this specific kind of house occupancy and aims to reveal the housing processes as well as aspirations of the house occupants who live and stay together.