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1 Introduction
Shaping Jakarta
Jörgen Hellman, Marie Thynell and Roanne van Voorst
What would a first-time visitor make of the city of Jakarta? Most likely that it is a lively or even chaotic city. And maybe also that it is shaped mainly by modern and Western planning traditions, market forces and political elites â since mega malls, private housing, skyscrapers, infrastructure projects and nationalistic monuments dominate the urban landscape. The visitor would be right in these observations. However, that is not the full story. Civil society, grassroots, squatters and entrepreneurs are important and decisive in shaping Jakartaâs spatial and socio-economic environments (see e.g. Simone, 2014; van Voorst, 2014; Hellman, 2015; Wilson, 2015). As we argue in this introduction, these dynamics are more pressing than ever, creating paradoxes and ambiguities. Jakartaâs many social and ecological problems are ever-increasing; so are the opportunities for actors to solve them. The city is hard to love, yet Indonesians migrate in large numbers. Inequality is ever-persistent, but the market is booming. Informal housing, local markets, street food and motorcycle taxis serve the needs of visitors, migrant workers and the city flaneurs as well as the permanent residents and staff working in shops, malls and government administration that move in and out of the tall rising Jakarta skyline.
Many of the authors that present their research in this volume have worked and lived in Jakarta for years. They show how urban space in Jakarta is increasingly created by the entanglement of different layers that co-exist in political and socio-economic life, with actors criss-crossing between formal and informal spheres. In each case the authors explore who are the drivers of urban change, and what are the processes in shaping the current and future city of Jakarta. We argue that Jakarta is being transformed in an unknown speed and manner by new types of urban authorities and drivers of transformation. These actors are moving in a field of opportunity that was created by recent and severe changes in the economic, socio-political and natural environment of Jakarta. Not denying that former elites are still a critical force in shaping Jakarta we ask to what extent are former stakeholders undermined by recent dynamics, and what types of new authorities or social institutions do we see emerging? How are drivers of transformation claiming their right to space in the city? And how do their actions and strategies reflect their vision of the future of Jakarta?
To shed light on all these different drivers of change and the dynamics they create, we explore what Watson terms âconflicts of rationalitiesâ (Watson, 2012, p. 96) â that is, how conflicts between different actors shape the city and the wider political economy in which they are embedded. Drivers of change (in Watsonâs terms, on one side, âtechno-managerial, modernizing and marketized systems of state planning, administration and service provision [and] profit driven land developersâ, and on the other side âmarginalized and impoverished urban populationsâ) act according to different perspectives, historical times, reasons and logics. The conflicts are often triggered by events of some magnitude such as natural hazards (for example big floods, extreme rains or earthquakes) but also by socio-political forces. The choice of responses builds on different imperatives and leads to the variety of actions and strategies that shape the city. One obvious example of such conflicting ârationalitiesâ can be found in the responses to floods in the vast areas of informal housing (kampongs) in Jakarta, where workers live for a minimum of cost but constantly run the risk of brutal evictions carried out by authorities, because of mega projects and infrastructural development in the city. While authorities as well as private developers and dwellers all agree that the living conditions in the kampongs have to improve, the suggested strategies are radically different (Hellman and van Voorst, this volume; Padawangi, this volume). Another example is small, informal markets outside bus terminals, train stations and administration buildings that serve people on the move to and forth from work. These markets are frequently closed down by authorities, after which the people who work there usually relocate and continue their work in another area.
While shedding lights on the different forces that âshapeâ Jakarta and their conflicting rationalities, we aim to avoid stereotyping Jakarta as a divided city where the private investors, political establishment and civil society never meet. Instead we provide a more complex view of the circumstances under which different actors and drivers may forward their specific ârationalitiesâ and imperatives and by that shape the urban space of Jakarta. This complex view is important for several reasons. First, Jakarta does not consist of a dual economy divided in a formal and informal sector. Instead, the economy of Jakarta is signified by interdependence between the market economy and an informal, local socio-economic reality (Sihombing, 2010). The market economy is dependent on the supply of cheap services and low wages created through urban poor living in illegal housing areas (kampongs) with low living costs (rents and transport) in the centre of the city. In exchange for cash, the kampong dwellers provide the market and the elites with inexpensive labour and a low-cost service sector. In this sense the market economy and kampong are interdependent and there exists a constant exchange of services, information, goods, money and work between them. It is a kind of âurban flowâ with characteristics typical of Jakarta and its cityness (Thynell, this volume). The urban poor and the informal economy thriving in the neighbourhoods are definitely âintegral to the wider economy of Jakartaâ (World Bank Jakarta, n.d., p. 41). To make a distinction between formal and informal economies does not make sense and is also irrelevant in governance and decision making. Informality is not only part of social life in local neighbourhoods but permeates the governance of society as well (Kusno, 2013, p. xvii). One consequence of informality is, of course, corruption and uncertainty, but as shown in the next section, it also opens up for markets and an organic city development.
New fields of opportunity
Over the past decades, scholars have described Jakarta as a city that is not only highly unequal in an economic sense â with pro-elite and neoliberalist policies marginalizing hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers (some 60 per cent of Jakartaâs population are estimated to live in low-income areas), but also as a city that is run by state and corporate actors, while average citizens (among which, most obviously the cityâs poor masses) remain to be excluded from decision-making processes. Another, rather negative, characteristic manner in which Jakarta has been described has to do with its dis-functioning and highly bureaucratic legal system. While on paper, Jakarta seems over-regulated and its urban planning arranged through thousands of laws, policy documents and reports, in practice, an astonishing amount of these plans are never implemented; the law applies to some but not to others causing uncertainty and corruption. Hence, the city is characterized by what has been called âimplementation deficitâ since policies and laws are not put into effect. Without denying that this situation is deeply problematic, the fact is that new fields of opportunities are also opening up for actors moving inside as well outside of these regulations.
Two forces that have opened this field of possibility are the ongoing, rapid urbanization, and the fast and stable economic development of the region, transforming Jakarta towards a âworld cityâ (Steinberg, 2007). Jakartaâs development offers a powerful illustration of the growth dynamics seen all over contemporary South East Asia. As the worldâs economic centre has shifted from the US eastwards, the earlier American twentieth century has given way to the Asian twenty-first century (Groof, 2012). The insertion of Jakarta into the global economy has been successful and is likely to continue. The city has become embedded in a global economy and has developed into an important economic hub in Asia. Eastern mega cities host 90 per cent of the large companies in the region (MGI, 2012) and huge investments are expected to strengthen the role of these cities in global economics. Indonesia is the worldâs largest producer and exporter of palm oil, the largest exporter of coal and the second-largest producer of cocoa, tin (MGI, 2012) and rubber (The Economist, 2015) and, hence, the economy has been, and still is, basically driven by its natural resources but Indonesia is on its way to becoming an important manufacturer as well. Jakarta is the centre for national headquarters of transnational corporations and producer service firms that coordinate manufacturing productions, and increasingly export-oriented services, in their extended metropolitan regions (Shatkin, 2007, p. 2). In Jakarta two-thirds of the national economy is controlled and managed (Salim and Kombaitan, 2009).
Another force opening up windows of opportunity is related to the democratization and decentralization processes that have thoroughly impacted the political climate in Indonesia over the past years (Törnquist, this volume). While the proponents of the rescaling and democratization of governance claim that these will help to make governance more inclusive and bring politics âcloser to the peopleâ, making it easier for vulnerable groups to claim their âright to the cityâ (Harvey 2012), others have observed that especially decentralization policies have created a power vacuum. Nowadays, local political institutions have the power, but not necessarily the means nor capacity to act (see e.g. https://informal-politics.org/2016/06/08/informal-politics-and-indonesias-new-village-law/). Instead of the city becoming more inclusive, these critics hold that the political system has only become more pro-elite and anti-poor, as local politicians feel forced to seek collaboration with the corporate sector and other wealthy actors in order to get things done. However, the wave of democratization processes since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998 has truly changed the political landscape in the sense that it allowed in new actors, and as such provided NGOs as well as political parties, civil militia groups and religious organizations with new opportunities. Still, there are few signs of growth of member-based political organizations and there is a huge deficit in participatory democracy.
A final important driving force to be mentioned has to do with the issue of climate change. Due to the expected negative impacts of climate change, Jakarta is under threat of several different natural hazards. In combination with the decentralized policies, these threats offer opportunities for policy makers, urban planners, corporate actors, environmentalists and other actors in the city to become engaged in climate change politics. As a result, tens of mega developments and other âclimate change experimentsâ are planned and some are already being set up in the city (Kennedy et al., 2014; Stepputat and van Voorst, 2016; Thompson, this volume). This experimentation is taking place beyond the âpolityâ, as new forms of partnership between public and private business models emerge in the design of urban political spaces through which climate change can be pursued. New urban authorities such as businessmen and technical experts are thus becoming engaged in climate change politics, while a plethora of actors intervene in climate change experiments, which serve as a means to demonstrate, cement, contest or challenge authority. Taken together all these forces and stakeholders involved therein are shaping the city in ways that reflect their view on a better, future Jakarta.
Urbanization in the field of tension between formal and informal city development
This book is situated in the reverberations of the broader debate about the right to the city (Lefvebre, 1996; Brenner et al., 2012; Harvey, 2012; Brown, 2013; Kuymulu, 2013). The right to the city evolved as a theoretical and social movement struggling against what scholars perceived as exclusionary processes inherent in globalization processes and neoliberal commodification that marginalized people from urban space. The right to access and use public space was a main issue (Mitchell, 1995; Iveson, 1998; Low and Smith, 2006; Patterson, 2011).
The organic growth of Jakarta seems to dodge all attempts for systematic city planning. Kampongs and mega projects are sprouting up in an unpredictable and far from systematic order. If the ideal of an integrated city is pursued, where âeconomic, social, political, cultural and environmental processesâ are to be joined (Gordon, in Buck et al., 2005, p. 78), the need for and tension between planning and participation becomes obvious (Calderia and Holston, 2005). However, it is not only in Jakarta that the will to govern stands in an uneasy relationship to the complexity and spontaneity of everyday urban life reported in anthropological and sociological ethnographic research on civil society (e.g. Hannerz, 1980; Gmelch and Zenner, 1988; Low, 1999; Li, 2007; Prato, 2009). The literature highlights how on a global scale, politicians, managers and other power holders, as well as regular citizens, are confronted with situations characterized by increasing uncertainties (Pellizzoni, 2003; Strathern, 2005).
Questions concerning how to âmake cities workâ (Gilbert et al., 1996) and how to facilitate urban development are often approached through studies of political institutions. These studies look at formal politics: policies, frameworks, decisions and actions of those who are officially in charge. However, already in 1996, McCarney had called for a new theorizing of the concept of âgovernmentâ that would be better equipped to address the new âalignment between state and civil societyâ (McCarney, 1996, p. 18). Decentralization and the ensuing multi-level governance increased the complexity of city planning. New civil actors and a range of stakeholders were emerging on the horizon of the planners, contributing to difficulties in the management of cities. Therefore, to accommodate the necessity of taking in more complex systems and a more diverse group of actors, the research focus shifted from what was happening on paper, to what was actually happening on the ground. To put that differently: the focus shifted from government, to management and governance (Pierre and Sundström, 2009) in an âeffort to coordinate and integrate public as well as private actions to tackle the major issues the inhabitants of cities are facingâ (van Dijk, 2006, p. 56).
Watson (2012) emphasizes the importance for city planning of including âinsurgent planningâ, bottom-up planning, and how informality permeates also what is expected to be formal (such as government institutions). Following these thoughts, in this book, rather than directing our attention to formal political and economic systems or civil society as consisting of autonomous, coherent or monolithic âurban regimesâ, we apply the more productive focus on the âinterface between insurgents ⊠and the multifaceted elements of the stateâ (Watson, 2012, p. 96). Instead of taking architecture, planning or design as a point of departure we start with how urban actors use space for different reasons and the conflicts that emerge through these claims to discuss processes of shaping urban space. The shaping of urban space is, in a very basic sense of the word, a social construction, where planners, politicians, private business and citizens in all their different roles take part. It is not a smooth process (Evers and Korff, 2000) and the conflicting views, understandings and interpretation of what is a legitimate and good way to use and thereby shape urban space is our methodological point of departure. This focus on urban space as shaped by social interaction and relations is reflected by the authors of this book, who share their background in the humanities and social sciences.
As mentioned, it would be naĂŻve to try to single out a political, private and civil society in Jakarta. These different layers of the city are intertwined with each other to an extent where it is difficult to know if a person acts out of economic interests, as a bureaucrat/politician or community advocate. Similarly, the rationalities that permeate the actors, individual or collective, are not that clear cut. Therefore, rather than define this in advance the different chapters will deal with the specific situation and th...
