Gentrifying the Peri-urban: Land use Conflicts and institutional dynamics at the Frontier of an Indonesian Metropolis

This paper aims to specify the meaning of gentrification in rapidly peri-urbanising metropolitan regions in the context of Indonesia’s rapid transition to decentralisation and democracy. It discusses a case study of conflict over an environmental revitalisation project in a peri-urban area of Bandung City. The analysis focuses on the political processes, tactics and strategies supporting and opposing peri-urban gentrification and their consequences. The analysis illustrates how these political dynamics mediate the interaction between the movement of capital and the spatial reorganisation of social classes. It is argued that in the context of a peri-urbanising metropolis, gentrification needs to be narrated less in terms of class-based neighbourhood succession and more in terms of competing cross-class coalitions emerging at local and regional levels

Policy networking as capacity building: An analysis of regional road development conflict in Indonesia

This article explores the potential of policy networking as an important aspect of capacity building. It deals with a road development project related to the regional planning issue of North Bandung Area (NBA), a water catchment area facing the expansion of Bandung Metropolitan Area, West Java, Indonesia. The debate on the road development proposal is reconstructed to illustrate how an environmental policy network is built by committed experts, politicians, NGO activists and journalists to prevent a pro-growth project from realization. The analysis also indicates the potential contribution of such a network to the transformation of governance that is more responsive to the issues of environmental quality and regional sustainability. This potential contribution is reflected by the role of the policy network in the mobilization of discursive knowledge, empowerment of weak actors, and social learning in the decision-making process