The role of cultural heritage has proven beneficial for the development of cities. The management of cultural heritage areas to improve and restore the city's identity is widely recognized as solid coordination with the upgrading and prevention of slum in the effective planning interventions. However, as a country of many heritage cities, Indonesia is concerned with the erosion of cultural heritage due to the uncontrolled rapid development of slums in the cultural heritage area, leading to socio-economic and cultural changes. These conditions required a change in the planning and governance systems and mediating new relationships and configurations between different actors through collaborative governance. Yet, guidance on designing collaborative governance for implementing the upgrading slum in a cultural heritage area is limited. This study aims to describe the process of collaborative governance related to upgrading slums in the cultural heritage area for the target location in Pulau Penyengat as a National Cultural Heritage. A qualitative descriptive approach is applied through in-depth interviews and literature study. The data is collected from purposive and snowball sampling of key informants and analyzed by interactive analysis with three components: data reduction, data presentation, and concluding. The results highlighted the involvement of stakeholders from academicians, business, community, government, and media to implement the upgrading slum in the cultural heritage area of Pulau Penyengat. The development applies the Pentahelix concept, which is classified into primary and secondary stakeholders and can be modified into key stakeholders.

Keywords: Collaborative governance, Cultural heritage, Pentahelix, Slum upgrading, Stakeholder characterization.