The impact of urbanization on kampung and peri-urban communities is often far-reaching and total. It touches almost all of the sectors of the communities’ everyday life. However, some communities have demonstrated their resilience toward certain aspects of the modernization process that is brought about by urbanization. The article aims at examining the local communities’ resilience in using herbal medicines for self-medication despite the continuous process of modernization as the result of urbanization in three urban kampungs in Jakarta and Tangerang. The long history of self-medication practice using herbal medicines was not only caused by herbal medicines’ accessibility and low cost but also because such a practice serves as the communities’ means of negotiation with modern medicine, which represents modernity, a key element of urbanization. Using a combination of ethnographic research methods and questionnaire distribution to collect data, this article suggests that there is a correlation between the communities’ cultural history and their attitude toward herbal medicines.