Urban Scale Development, Colonial Pasts, and Underlying Ecologies: A Case Study Analysis of Jakarta
“Under the influence of the discourses and practices of global neoliberal urbanism (Sheppard et al. 2013), municipal administrations worldwide aspire to make their cities world class — spaces.” (Sheppard, 2020). Which has resulted in the rise of glossy high-rise flats, glitzy “European” style apartment complexes and luxurious shopping malls in Global South cities like Jakarta. Aspirations of the rich and wealthy and national government for “modernity” and “European aesthetic”, has resulted in the gentrification and displacement of the urban poor, as these capitalist mega projects occur where the urban poor have established communities for decades.
This paper will strictly focus on and critically analyse how urban scale development relates to colonial histories and underlying ecologies. I will begin this essay with an introduction, and then define key terms, before turning to the case study analysis of Jakarta before concluding this paper. Colonial histories and complex watery ecologies make the contemporary drive to world-class, neoliberal urbanisation even more contentious and complex. In urban scale development, it is often the urban poor who are most affected by the drive to become an “exemplary city” through capital movements and governance initiatives. As many are forcibly evicted and displaced, they are often left without access to basic service provisions or housing.
These populations are most vulnerable to unpredictable flooding yet, they are blamed for it and removed from the very communities they built from scratch. Whilst urban scale development is said to reflect national progress, it can be argued that only very few benefit from these developments which “cater to the needs of the economically viable urban population, and rarely provide remedies for numerous public problems and needs” (Eizenberg, 2019).
Defining key terms
Urban scale development refers to the development of a densely populated area, it’s “sometimes seen as a win-win solution that both supports urban economic growth and fulfils market needs” (Eizenberg, 2019). Urban scale development is “a form of making space in the city, space in which to live, work, consume and recreate.”(Eizenberg, 2019). And for this space to be materialised “gentrification has become a central strategy” (Eizenberg, 2019). Urban scale development also establishes “new private-public relations, new urban demographic transformations and novel environmental concerns.” (Eizenberg, 2019), and it is often in these novel environmental concerns and urban demographic transformations in which contestations around these developments capitalist dynamics arise.
Urban scale developments “are often promoted as part of general densification plans, and as a way to address both housing demands and environmental concerns.” (Eizenberg, 2019). However, Eizenberg emphasises that “questions should be asked about whom these developments are for, who are the excluded, and what kinds of social-spatial relations they generate.” (Eizenberg, 2019).
When defining urban scale development, we must also consider what urban development signifies. For cities like Jakarta, some may argue that urban scale represents the progress of the “exemplary” city and signifies its success and the embrace of globalisation. Yet to some, questions arise regarding whose vision of progress do the urban scale represent? Whose lives are made worse? Are these development projects in the best interests of the nation or a select few who can afford them? The pace in which high-rise buildings, glitzy apartments, commercial centres and business parks are erecting across cities in the Global South is unprecedented (Harris, 2015). When we think about urban development, we think about the modernisation which occurs, and often when a country aspires to have all of the above, the urban poor bear the burden of being forcibly removed and evicted when these areas are “sanitised”.
Nationalist vs Neoliberal urbanism
During the post-independence era, Jakarta was shaped by nationalist urbanism. Abidin kusno refers to nationalist urbanism as “urban development projects in the interest of the nation” (Kusno, 2011), and projects an image of national progress, modernity and a measure of development in capital city to international spectators and its own citizens. “The logic of building cities according with the dynamics of global financial capitalism has given rise to what is known as neoliberal urbanism.” ( Miro, 2010), and “in recent years, we have witnessed the dramatic and unprecedented urban growth through large urban developments.” (Eizenberg, 2019).
Neoliberal urbanism has taken precedent in the city, because “cities like Jakarta position their selves in higher positions of the hierarchical global urban network in which competitiveness is the key. Cities positioned at the top-global cities are the focus of most financial flows, and being the most powerful in the world arena.” ( Miro, 2010).
Urban scale development in Jakarta and underlying ecologies
As a fluid ecology, Jakarta “has long experienced flooding, but it has become more frequent and more extreme in recent decades.” (Colven, 2017), and because of this pre-urban ecology continues to haunt this city as flooding claims the lives of citizens, particularly the urban poor. “The coast carries an ‘imperial nostalgia’ of a ‘contact zone’ filled with dangerous adventures and promises of untapped resources for capitalist and scientific discoveries.” (Kusno, 2011).
The Dutch canalised the water ways and mirrored “Europeanised urban centre complete with rows of Dutch buildings constructed around a rational grid system.” (Tilly et al, 2017) to fix the city’s watery ecology into a solid landscape, but this has been without complete success and plans of sea wall have not solved the cities mobile landscape. The costal port, served as a strategic location for the Dutch for the extraction of goods, and post-colonialism “the coast of Jakarta carried particular meaning for the decolonized nation.” (Kusno, 2011). Despite being a mixture of silty, unstable and illuvial costal land, the “Jakarta Bay project is considered as one of the most significant megaprojects not only for the city but also for the nation.” (Kusno, 2011).
In 2015, Jakarta was “the second fastest sinking city” (Deltares, 2015). The “scale and speed of the urbanization process on the coast generates changes in land use that have never been seen before, which in most cases, cause serious damage to dynamic but fragile coastal-marine ecosystems.” (Setiad et al, 2020).The risk of further flooding is exacerbated by the change in land use, and the “loss of porous surfaces to absorb rainfall.” (Padawangi and Douglass, 2015) arising from the ever-expanding development projects. Groundwater extraction and weight expanding surface area from the urban scale is also causing the city to sink further as the extended concretised areas which were often left for water drainage, are now trapped above the concrete. The cities problem could be solved through the cities infrastructure and if proper water drainage areas were constructed.
“Waterfront cities have been commonly perceived as something that increases the economic value and the identity of a place” (Setiadi et al, 2020). The coast was sanitised and securitised as an area of leisure for the wealthy and made the “forefront of the capital city and the location for hotels, business centres, shopping malls, office buildings, marinas, an entertainment complex, industrial parks, and upscale accommodation for some 1.19 million residents.” (Setiadi et al, 2020). Like many so called “world cities”, the rapid and intense spread of neoliberalist capitalist developments in recent decades has undeniably contribute to cities underlying ecology which adversely affect the urban poor. Parts of the city are sinking below sea level rise because of the subsidence under the city which is caused by the increasing extraction of ground water. Jakarta has expanded in an unplanned way and the public water system have not been developed to support this expansion.
The urban poor, urban scale development and colonial pasts
Jakarta’s precolonial settlements were made into very large strategic port cities through colonial urbanism and for the purposes of extraction, which laid the foundations for future problems. The original purpose of the city is very important to the events occurring over the years. Kusno emphasises the shifting development dynamics in Jakarta in his analysis of the waterfront mega project, to show how the projects don’t require financial capital but investment in a particular meaning. The meaning has shifted to international capital and globalisation focus.
The coast was abandoned by the colonial administration who moved to higher and drier grounds, and this area was taken over by urban poor and racialised others in the city. By the 2000’s urban improvement in the centre of the city was causing gridlock traffic, thus shifting the focus of city’s development to the neglected coast which offered an opportunity to start again with modern “European” infrastructures, high world class buildings, shopping malls and a vision of cosmopolitan capitalism fitting with the neoliberal era. The reclamation of land by Governor Sutiyoso is crucial to the large-scale developments at the waterfront, which involve the removal of urban poor to make way for monumental urban projects.
We begin to see colonial pasts being mirrored in these urban developments, particularly when we focus on “forced-evictions which became common practice to clear land for…commercial projects…without any consultation or compensation” (Widyaningsih et al, 2021). What is constant is how the urban poor are subjected to evictions, displacements and underservicing of the kampungs by the state authorities, and the struggles of space and the rights over the city. The urban poor have long built two story houses in more precarious lands, and in densely packed settlement houses which have very little structure on the ground. Discourses of blame become central to narratives of forced evictions which connect the urban poor to the causes of flooding to justify removal their removal. “These large-scale interventions have been used to justify the forcible eviction of residents from settlements situated along the city’s riverbanks and reservoirs (Sheppard, 2006; Leitner et al., 2017), such as the high-profile eviction of residents from Kampung Pulo in August 2015”.
The stigmatisation of kampungs echoes the colonial past, and presently “city evictions are also historically-informed and gendered processes which are continuous with past colonial and postcolonial urban rationalisation projects.” (Tilley et al, 2017). “During the colonial era, kampungs of Jakarta Bay were racially distinguished as non-European settlements” (Tilley et al, 2017). Today, those same characterisations still haunt kampungs and label them as “unhygienic spaces and…described in a derogatory way as uninhabitable ‘slums’.” (Tilley et al, 2017).
In relation to the cities colonial past, kampungs still “maintain a reputation as ‘disorderly’” (Tilley et al, 2017), and are differentiated settlements just like the Dutch termed them. To understand the impact these developments, have on the urban poor, we must consider the incremental improvement in the lives of the urban poor people who work all hours in informal economy, buy land, and build small properties. Displaced communities have to start all over again from scratch, and from a gender perspective women tend to have small shops and business in these local communities and when urban poor neighbourhoods are destroyed for mega projects women loose business incomes, their homes, and find it more challenging to start again. The urban poor are disposed and evicted for a particular grandiose and commercial development project which is justified by colonial pasts of differentiation and stigmatisation. The urban poor are usually blamed for the problem which impacts them the most, as they do not have access to adequate housing, state service, or the glossy high-rise flats and leisure parks.
Conclusion
Cities in the Global South, like Jakarta reveal the problems and challenges of urban development, and by taking a long durée look at colonial and post-colonial histories we can trace these through to contemporary dynamics under neoliberal capitalism. It can be said that urban scale development in Jakarta relates to both colonial pasts and underlying ecologies as pre-urban ecology still haunts the city in the form of unpredicted flooding. Rapid and intense urban scale development, on the cities watery ecology has only caused sea levels to rise higher. The differentiation and racialised segregation of the other still reflects the influence of nations colonial past on urban scale development. Mass evictions and displacements of the urban poor as a result of mega-scale neoliberal capitalist developments has resulted in social and spatial inequality in the city and often the groups who need protection has undeniably left without nothing. And whilst the city may aspire to a “world-class” city, its underlying ecology and unpredictable and watery landscapes are often overlooked in the pursuit of modernisation and urban scale projects.
