Scrutinising Nusantara: the making of an authoritarian city

In August 2019, Indonesian President Joko Widodo unexpectedly announced the plan to build a new capital called Nusantara. It will relocate the capital from Jakarta to East Kalimantan by 2024. This paper critically examines Indonesia’s ambition to build Nusantara within a short time. In this paper, a narrative policy framework is applied to unpack the core reasons and assumptions that underpin Widodo’s adamant decision to carry out a large-scale urban project of the new capital despite social and financial constraints. By interrogating two fundamental fallacies underlying the Nusantara project, in the rationales and the construction process, I show how the new capital project is deeply problematic. The notion of techno-nationalist urbanism is proposed to underline the contradiction in the logic and rationality of Nusantara’s urban system as a result of authoritarian symptoms. Further, the paper links Nusantara to the nature of power embodied in Widodo’s strong desire for a legacy and its impact on Indonesian democracy in the future

City Profile: Jakarta

With a population of 10.56 million, Jakarta is one of the megacities in the emerging economies facing massive problems of urban growth. Despite rapid developments in infrastructure and public facilities, an increased population growth inevitably creates the situation in which Jakarta has to deal with a long list of urban issues, from housing inequality, chronic traffic jams, and environmental pollution. It renders Jakarta to become increasingly vulnerable due to the sheer quantity of human activities and an impending ecological disaster. This paper provides an account of how Jakarta seeks to enhance its resilience against urban risks and hazards. The purpose of this city profile is twofold. First, it explores the gradual efforts Jakarta has taken to create the conditions for a resilient city that have been shaped by a shift from one leadership to another. Second, it highlights technical, environmental, and organisational challenges Jakarta is facing to achieve its resilience goals. We recommend that more efforts to develop data infrastructures and policy integration to accelerate the transformation process that would transform Jakarta into a truly resilient megacity

Extreme Heat and COVID-19: The Impact on the Urban Poor in Asia and Africa

The research on which this report was based was funded by the UK Research and Innovation and the Global Challenges Research Fund through the Economic and Social Research Council (Award ES/T008091/1) and by the Scottish Funding Council as part of Cool Infrastructures, a multi-disciplinary project into life with heat in global cities. We also thank the Norwegian Red Cross and Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for publication support.The study provides substantial new data on the direct as well as indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, thermal comfort and heat-related illness, in Jakarta (Indonesia), Hyderabad (India), Karachi and Hyderabad (Pakistan) and Douala (Cameroon). These cities are home to very large or rapidly growing low-income populations dealing with extreme heat. Alongside data on heat exposure and symptoms associated with heat-related illness, the report supplies supplementary data points on access to electricity, water, food, health services, as well as income and food intake during the COVID-19 pandemic, that will be of use to policy makers and researchers. The report is intended for use by governmental and non-governmental organisations in these cities and countries as they work to fine-tune policy and programme responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and avoid heat-related health impacts. Its broader findings are intended to be of use to inform interventions in urban areas facing similar challenges across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and South East Asia

The State and the Reactor: Nuclear Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia

Page range: 101-149In the wake of its energy crisis, Indonesia has decided to develop nuclear power to fulfill soaring demands for electricity. The rationale for going nuclear, this study argues, resides not in potential technical or economic advantages, per se, but, more importantly, in the desire of the state to assert its power over society. Nuclear politics is highly relevant to understanding the nature of the post-Suharto state in relation to ongoing contemporary democratic transitions. By delving into the politics of nuclear power in post-Suharto Indonesia, and the conflicts between the technological elites who support the construction of nuclear power plants and the organizations that actively oppose such construction, this study examines how technology shapes state–society relations in post-authoritarian Indonesia

A message from Ashabirin: high technology and political Islam in Indonesia

Abstract not available

The State and the reactor : nuclear politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia

tanding tallon Jepara'smain street,thebuilding was only halfway done when it was chosen as a venue to host an important gathering on a day in early September 2007. The owner of the building, the Jepara district branch of Nahdlatul Ulama (Pengurus Cabang Nahdlatul Ulama, PCNU), Indonesia's largest Islamic social organization, had onlybeen able toplace some decorations toembellish theunfinished three-storybuilding. The urgency of thismeeting PCNU was compelled tohost had apparently prevented them from reserving a better place. A month of preparation had convinced PCNU's leaders that they would be able to act as mediators and facilitate a healthy dialogue between two conflictinggroups thatheld opposing stances regarding Jakarta's plan to build nuclear power plants in the Muria Peninsula, about fifty kilometers from the PCNU headquarters. The presence of Minister of Research and Technology Kusmayanto Kadiman, who was invited to inaugurate the one-day meeting, pressured PCNU to ensure that everything was under control. Consequently, a battalion of security officerswas deployed around the perimeter of thebuilding, blocking off the front street to prevent uninvited guests from interrupting the proceedings. What occurred, it turned out, was not exactly what PCNU had anticipated

Modeling a simulation for sociotechnical resilience

This paper proposes a conceptual model to simulate the response of sociotechnical systems to crisis. The model draws on a concept of “sociotechnical resilience” as the theoretical framework, which underscores the hybrid nature of sociotechnical systems. Revolving around the notion of transformability, the concept considers sociotechnical resilience to be constitutive of three fundamental attributes, namely, informational relations, sociomaterial structures, and anticipatory practices. Our model aims to capture the complex interactions within a sociotechnical system during a recovery process by incorporating these core attributes in the operational units embedded in a multilevel directed acyclic graph, information networks, and recovery strategies. Furthermore, the model emphasizes specifically the role of informational configuration during a disruption. We introduce two recovery strategies in our simulation, namely, random recovery and informed recovery. The former represents the unprepared responses to crisis, while the latter incorporates the reporting process to support the command centre in making optimum decisions. The simulation results suggest the importance of system flexibility to allow structural reconfiguration at the organizational level. Our proposed model complements the theoretical principles of sociotechnical resilience while laying a practical foundation of sociotechnical modeling for resilience enhancement in real-world settings.National Research Foundation (NRF)Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental SustainabilityPublished versionThis work is an outcome of the Future Resilient Systems project at the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC), which was funded by the National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF) under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme (FI 370074011)