Abundance Without Equity
We live in an age of unprecedented abundance. Never in human history have so many people had access to so much food, technology, and material goods. Ironically, instead of being told to eat more, millions are now urged to reduce calorie intake. Obesity has become a global epidemic—over 1 billion people worldwide are obese, including 650 million adults, 340 million adolescents, and 39 million children, according to the World Health Organization (2023).
Yet malnutrition persists. In 2022, an estimated 735 million people—nearly one in ten—faced chronic hunger, with the highest concentrations in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and parts of Latin America (FAO, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023). This contradiction exists despite the fact that the world produces more than enough food: over 9.8 billion metric tons annually (FAO, 2023). Meanwhile, food waste has reached staggering levels—over 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted each year, about one-third of all produced (FAO, Global Food Losses and Food Waste, 2011).
The issue, clearly, is not production capability or production per-se. It is misalignment. We produce more than enough, but the right kinds of food don’t reach those who need them, and too much of the wrong kinds flood areas already oversupplied.
Spatial Abundance, Unevenly Shared
The same logic applies to space. People need it—to live, to learn, to access services, and to rest. But across the world, the spatial environment suffers from two core problems: the spaces created are often not the kinds people need, and they are not located where they are most needed.
As a society, we continue to produce high-end luxury housing while neglecting the urgent demand for accessible public housing. In many cities, there is an oversupply of housing that targets the top income brackets—leaving essential workers, low-income families, and the urban poor increasingly excluded. In the United States, for example, cities like San Francisco and New York have seen thousands of high-end condos built in the last decade, yet more than 580,000 people remain homeless across the country, with over 40% sleeping unsheltered (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2023 Annual Homeless Assessment Report).
In London, the trend is just as stark. As of 2023, there were over 3,000 unsold luxury apartments (Molior London, 2023) while more than 300,000 people remained on the waiting list for council housing (UK House of Commons Library, Social Housing Waiting Lists, 2023). Entire blocks of high-end flats remain dark at night—held as investment assets rather than lived-in homes—while public housing stock continues to shrink.
In Indonesia, especially in Jakarta and rapidly urbanizing regions like Greater Bandung and Surabaya, the government and private developers continue to invest in vertical apartments and gated communities aimed at the middle- to upper-class market. Yet the housing backlog remains severe, with an estimated 12.7 million housing units needed to accommodate low-income households (Indonesian Ministry of Public Works and Housing, 2023). Informal settlements, or kampungs, often remain the only option for the urban poor, lacking access to adequate infrastructure and basic services.
Similarly, land is often prioritized for elite leisure—golf courses, luxury resorts, private clubhouses—while the majority of the population are mid-to-low income. Globally, over 70% of people live on less than $10 per day (World Bank, 2023), yet urban development continues to favor commercial entertainment districts and exclusive lifestyle centers, inaccessible to most.
Worse still, vast spaces are used for low-social-value functions: excessive surface parking lots, abandoned malls, speculative land banks, and redundant commercial zones. Meanwhile, what people truly need—affordable childcare centers, local health clinics, public transport nodes, and green commons—are left underfunded and spatially marginalized. This isn't a failure of imagination; it’s a failure of alignment between spatial production and societal needs.
Planning for People, Not Just Profit
The root cause lies in how the market economy governs space. In a system driven by profit, spatial decisions are dictated by what yields the highest return—not what improves collective wellbeing. Developers build where margins are largest, not where families lack homes. Land is bought and held idle if prices are expected to rise, rather than being developed for urgently needed uses.
Space, unlike manufactured goods, is finite. Once built over, transformed, or privatized, it is difficult—if not impossible—to reclaim for the public good. This makes it a critical, limited resource that must be managed with care. Yet under current market logic, we are treating space as though it were limitless, allocating it not based on need but based on purchasing power.
To correct this imbalance, society must shift its priorities. We need to allocate space with the goal of providing as much utility and justice as possible—not just generating profit. That means reserving land for public housing, education, healthcare, parks, and cultural life, even if these do not produce immediate financial returns.
Left to market forces alone, spatial planning produces inequality. It results in exclusionary enclaves, underutilized land, and growing divides between those who can pay for access and those who cannot. A fairer system requires deliberate planning—production, distribution, and consumption of space based not on wealth, but on shared human needs.
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