The City Is Not Broken: Land, Debt, and the Logic of Urban Form in Indonesia

Written with the assistance of an AI

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INTRODUCTION

Colonialism happened in America, Africa, and Asia but they did not take a single uniform shape; it adapted to local ecologies, demography, and economic opportunity.

In the Americas, European expansion produced plantation economies and the trans-Atlantic slave trade; in parts of Africa and the Indian Ocean world colonialism consolidated systems of large-scale servitude tied to maritime commerce; in much of Southeast Asia, by contrast, widespread hereditary slavery did not become the dominant regime—instead a variety of labor and land relations persisted (debt bondage, forced-labor, household servitude, tenant systems) that fit different ecological and political constraints.

The reason for these divergent outcomes is not cultural accident but selection: dominant actors choose the extraction mechanism that yields the highest surplus at the lowest political and logistical resistance under given conditions. Seen this way, the broad form of a society—its political institutions, labor regimes, and spatial arrangements—is a material expression of what secures surplus for the dominant class in that historical moment.

Manufacturing Demand: Urban Growth, Financialized Land, and the Misreading of Housing Needs in Jabodetabek

Written with the assistance of an AI

Introduction: When Growth Stops Explaining Itself

Urban growth in the Jabodetabek metropolitan region is often presented as an inevitable response to demand. Rising populations, household formation, and economic expansion are assumed to naturally translate into the proliferation of new towns, gated communities, and peripheral housing estates. Development, in this narrative, is not only necessary but self-justifying: if units are built and sold, demand must exist.

Yet beneath this apparent progress lies a persistent contradiction.

Housing affordability remains out of reach for large segments of median-income households and housing backogs remain large. Long commutes, spatial fragmentation, and underutilized urban areas coexist with relentless outward expansion. The volume of development continues to increase, while fundamental housing and spatial needs remain unresolved.

This article argues that this contradiction is not accidental. In Jabodetabek, urban growth is increasingly shaped by a feedback loop between financialized land and property markets, policy frameworks that incentivize asset ownership, and developer strategies that rationally respond to these incentives. Within this system, urban planning and development function less as mechanisms to meet functional socio-economic needs, and more as instruments that stabilize and legitimize investment-driven urbanization - resulting in the systematic production of urban space that manufactures demand while leaving core needs unmet.

A World of Abundance, Unequal Access

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.

Sprawling: An Inherent Trait of New Town Development

We can't expect high density development in our suburbs because sprawling is an inherent trait of Indonesian new town development.

1. Indonesian suburb new town developments are mainly working on a massive area of land bank.
   
   
2. Their business model usually involves buying the land at a very low price and selling it at an extremely high price to allow a high margin of profit. That price are basically not set by market valuation but instead engineered by the developers.

In Defense of Jaywalking (in neighborhood street)

Have you ever being in a car that passes through a narrow strip of street where people seems to have low sensitivity of the presence of vehicles? They walk close to the middle of the street, they cross without looking, children carelessly stroll, in short, jaywalking.

Especially for the person that's driving, it must be an awkward situation or even stressful. The narrow street becomes even narrower with the presence of the people, the vehicle can only move very slowly, and the driver got to make sure that they don't hit anyone.

This piece would argue that that is exactly how a neighborhood street should be: People walk freely, how they want to walk, without fear of being grazed by motorized vehicles.

Households Without Access to Adequate and Affordable Housing

 In 2019, 43.49% of Indonesian households did not have access to adequate and affordable housing.

The highest being in Bangka Belitung at 73.84% and the lowest was in DI Yogyakarta at 18.39%.

According to BPS projection of 2010 census, there were 68,700,700 households in Indonesia in 2019.

That means there are more than 29.8 million households in Indonesia living in inadequate housing.

With average household member 3.9 person per household in national scale, then it's equal to more than 116 million persons.

In DKI Jakarta as the Capital City, the number was 65.75% in 2019.

That means there were 1,8 million households without access to adequate and affordable housing in DKI Jakarta or equal to almost 6.7 million persons (3.8 person per household average).

Definition of Adequate and Affordable Housing is a house with access to:

• Proper drinking water source.
• Proper sanitation.
• Sufficient living space (floor area >= 7.2 sqm per capita).
• Proper roof, floor, and wall condition.

Public Housing Scheme Survey

I am currently collecting informations regarding Public Housing schemes for the purpose of  learning and comparative study.

Such informations are scattered all over the places and are changing over time, so I think it is best to try to gather informations from the crowd. I invite Urban Planning and Urban Design practitioners, teachers, students, government officials, or anyone with the knowledge to fill in the form below or to share the survey to your friends or colleagues.

Moratorium of New Town Development in Java Island

BACKGROUND

Java is the most populated island on earth. With land area around 139,000 square kilometer, Java island is house for more than 151 millions population, more than half of overall Indonesian population.

That population as well as household numbers are increasing consistently, which also means the increase of housing and food needs.

Moratorium New Town di Pulau Jawa - SEKARANG!

Pada bagian sebelumnya (Moratorium New Town di Pulau Jawa) kita telah membahas bahwa pada suatu titik, akan diperlukan Moratorium Pengembangan New Town di pulau Jawa. Di bagian ini kita akan membahas kapan waktu yang tepat. Untuk mencoba menjawab pertanyaan tersebut, ada beberapa hal yang perlu dipertimbangkan.

On Superclusters

New Town Developments, which usually dominated by Landed Residential programs, is a contemporary reality that we can't deny. There might be argumentations against their existence, but in the meantime they are there, they are big, and they are growing.

One of the Landed Residential typology that usually is offered by New Town Developments is Supercluster concept. That is multiple Clusters within one larger Cluster. One Subcluster is usually ranging from 3 to 5 hectares in size, which make one Supercluster with 4 or more Subclusters ranging around 12 to 60 hectares in size.

A typical Supercluster Scheme

A Cluster in general offers exclusivity, privacy, and maintained Residential character within its boundaries, below are the positive and negative qualities of Supercluster concept.

Moratorium New Town di Pulau Jawa

Jawa adalah pulau dengan populasi terbanyak di muka bumi. Dengan area sekitar 139 ribu kilometer persegi, pulau Jawa menampung lebih dari 151 juta penduduk, lebih dari setengah populasi Indonesia secara keseluruhan.

Kota, Ekstraksi, Eksploitasi, dan Komoditas

Sudah jamak diketahui bahwa lingkungan terbangun dan infrastruktur adalah salah satu sarana untuk melakukan eksploitasi dan ekstraksi Sumber Daya Alam dan Sumber Daya Manusia. Tetapi bagaimana dengan Sumber Daya Ruang? Dan bagaimana dengan peran kota dalam kegiatan ekstraksi dan eksploitasi tersebut? Diskusi ini bertujuan untuk mengeksplorasinya secara singkat.

Catatan: Cukup disadari bahwa dalam banyak hal tulisan di ini tidak cukup tajam, tidak cukup dalam, dan di beberapa tempat tidak betul-betul yakin juga dengan apa yang dituliskan. Tetapi sekalipun demikian tetap dituliskan juga, dengan sedikit compang-camping dan menyimpang dari bahasan inti, karena memang ditujukan sebagai suatu studi, suatu pemantik untuk diskusi atau pemikiran lebih jauh lagi.

Map of Why: Ugly River Side of Jakarta

This article will be a simple causality exploration of why (some) public spaces in Jakarta are (still) ugly, in this case the river.

Common discussions on the theme tend to be too simplistic to the level of condescending and fatalistic, it's not giving any clue to what can be done to improve the situation. In this discussion we are trying a more thorough causality exploration on why (some) public spaces in Jakarta are (still) ugly. We will take river side of Jakarta as an example.

The river is ugly because the river is treated as dumpster because the river is seen as backyard because the river is ugly, or vice versa, it brings us nowhere.

Cycling as First Mile in Jakarta through Secondary & Tertiary Roads

This writing is triggered by an article that was written by a colleague of mine, Daniel Caesar Pratama: Considering Cycling as A Mode of Commuting in Jakarta: A GIS Analysis Exercise.

He used GIS to do spatial analyses to show that when we integrate cycling infrastructure with mass transit system in Jakarta, the coverage area of the mass transit will be increased to 80%. The summary points from his article were:

• Cycling has a huge potential to be a sustainable, resilient, affordable and robust mode of transportation.
• Cycling is best positioned as the first-mile last-mile solution rather than as the main transportation system.
• Cycling as transportation should be done leisurely and comfortable, therefore 4 km (5–15 minutes of cycling) from transit to destination is preferable.
• By optimizing cycling infrastructures to cater the cycling radius below 4km, cycling should not compete with online taxi bikes nor walking.
• Integrating cycling with the mass transit such as MRT, KRL, and TransJakarta increases their service area to cover 80% of Jakarta.
• Cycling infrastructures should be prioritized to be integrated into stations that serve the most populated and are able to reach the most destinations.
• By utilizing GIS spatial analysis, we can create a powerful tool to have better-informed decisions about the shaping of our city.

Following that article, Daniel, together with Adam Nurilman – his old friend, and Urban+ Institute held a series of workshops to explore the idea, in partnership with XDS Lab and Somia CX. I had the opportunity to join one of the workshop sessions as team member of the first team. In this writing I'll try to elaborate and structure a bit more the idea that I submitted to the workshop.

The Problem

I am not a commuter cyclist, so when the workshop put forth a question of how to make cycling be more possible for first and last mile transportation mode in Jakarta, integrated with transit system (such as BRT, LRT, MRT, and/or Commuter Line), the first thing that I did was to imagine how would it felt like to cycle (especially) the first mile of commuting in Jakarta – from home to the nearest or strategic transit point. Let’s examine the underlying situation.

In general, Jakarta is a very cluster-fragmented city. Though most of the neighborhoods are not exactly clusters by definition, but most of the neighborhoods are arranged like an almost closed circuit with minimal accessibility, with labyrinth-like road network, and some (many) times are located inside or in-between yet another clustered neighborhoods. Though it might not be relevant to this discussion, the reason for that condition might be single use (residential) zoning system that are still being implemented up until today.

A Mausoleum of Human Desires

A city is a place of billions of human interests. From the grandeur ones shared by millions, to the smallest ones each adopted only by an individual; from livelong hopes to localised and temporary desires; from humanity's highest dreams beyond their times, to what common men wishes in life, to the humble daily life needs, to the lowest and disgusting secret wants. Some will turn and leave a mark in human civilization, some will result in monuments and memorials, some will end in books, but the rest will be buried deep together with the rotten human flesh. Insignificant, forgotten, and meaningless.

A city is a mausoleum of human desires.

Urban, Suburban, dan Rural

Di Indonesia, khususnya di Jakarta dan wilayah sekitarnya, orang tergila-gila pada kepemilikan privat atas ruang, atau properti privat dalam bentuk tanah.

Meskipun secara historis dan geografis sangat berbeda, ketergila-gilaan tersebut mirip dengan apa yang terjadi di Amerika Serikat. Perbedaannya, di sana hal tersebut memang dengan sengaja diadakan sejak awal kemerdekaannya dari Inggris. Thomas Jefferson membagi tanah di seantero negara tersebut ke dalam grid-grid yang dapat dibeli dan dimiliki oleh pihak privat, dengan argumentasi bahwa kepemilikan akan tanah akan menjamin demokrasi. Tetapi secara politik-ekonomi, menjual kepemilikan privat atas tanah adalah untuk mengisi kas negara, juga untuk menghidupi perekonomian agraris di masa itu, dan sebagai daya tarik utama bagi para imigran dari benua Eropa, sekaligus sebagai akar dari terbitnya patriotisme.

The Language of Jakartan Car Passing

In Jakarta, car drivers love to change lanes incessantly and tries to overtake other vehicles on the road. They do it to the point of breaking the law and sacrificing the safety of theirselves and others.

Even sicker, some of them do it with very lack of manner. They'll pass the other car in a very thin distance, or immediately put themselves sharply in front of the passed car, or doing it while honking dramatically.

A Compendium of Human Despairs

A city is where people are meeting and parting, setting promises and breaking it, building and destroying home, creating and nurturing hopes that immediately vanish in less than a breath. Joy, celebration, romance, every magnificent story that can be dreamt of, and every little happiness that a man can nervously aspire; each only awaits its own end. Tears at the birth of a new life are colliding with tears at the end of the other, celebrations very soon become irrelevant and obsolete, romances and loves fade away as inane past, desires of courageous revolution determined to be crushed in the face of the cold hard reality. A book of human failures, a collection of ruthless end of every beginning, an album of men who have lost interest in hoping and dreaming.

A city is a compendium of human despairs.

Batavia Series: 1. The Establishment

In The Batavia Series we will use historical maps to explore the spatial developments of Indonesian capital, Jakarta, from its founding as Batavia by VOC, its spreading, the fall of VOC and the reign of Dutch East Indies Colony, until its transfer to the Indonesian Republic. The series will be consisted of several parts based on the development phases of the city.

Note: The historical maps are superimposed to the contextual map of 2017, while larger view of the superimposed maps can be seen at the end of each of the series. For the early series (year 1600s and early 1700s), we will use only the northern part of Jakarta as the contextual map.

Batavia was not erected on an empty ground. In the 4th century, the site was part of Tarumanagara Kingdom, and from 7th to 13th century it was part of Sunda Kingdom, with its Sunda Kelapa port, which was part of the Srivijaya Empire. In 1513 the first contact with the Europeans was made between Sunda Kingdom and the Portuguese merchants, which then built their own port in 1522. In 1527 Fatahillah, a general from Demak Kingdom, conquered the city, put it under Banten Sultanate control, and renamed it Jayakarta. In 1596 merchants from the Netherlands led by Cornelis de Houtman reached Jayakarta for trade and in 1610 they were granted permission to build a trading outpost on the east bank of Ciliwung river, which then finished on 1611. By that time, the British were also had arrived at Jayakarta in 1602.

In other part of the world, the Dutch Government granted VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, United East Indies Company) monopoly right for Asian trade in 1602, thus from that point until its liquidation in 1799, the main role of the history of Batavia was the VOC, a corporation, instead of the Dutch Government directly.

International Guide For Driving Or Riding In Jakarta

One cannot be considered has truly experienced Jakarta if he or she has not tried to drive a car there, on its highways, in its traffic, in rush hour, behind the steering wheel. But that is only second to the ultimate challenge, the surreal life and death experience, the act of courage and totality, one way to become one with the city itself, feeling and living its heartbeat; riding a motor bike. If any of you really want to be elevated to that level of understanding of Jakarta, this International Guide is created to facilitate that purpose.


Disclaimer: Although this International Guide is very rich in detailed facts, one must understand that most of them, if not all, are potentially against the law, and that this International Guide is basically a style of writing that uses humor, irony, exaggeration, and ridicule to expose and criticize something. Both the writer and the writing of this International Guide cannot be held responsible in case anything happened, either good or bad, that resulted from reading or practicing the content of this International Guide.