Introduction

Indonesia has decided to relocate its capital city (Ibu Kota Negara, IKN) to East Kalimantan, in the Penajam Paser Utara and Kutai Kartanegara regencies, with Law No. 3 (2022) confirming the decision. The government has named the IKN “Nusantara”, which according to the Minister of National Development Planning, Suharso Monoarfa, reflects the reality of Indonesia: a maritime country in which the islands are united by the sea. Additionally, the minister stated that the name was chosen because it reflects Indonesia's geography and is internationally iconic.

In building a new capital, the government has highlighted several characteristics representing Indonesia's identity. The IKN Law states that it will be built as a forest city, a sponge city, and a smart city. Beyond the three characteristics, maritime identity—an identity that Indonesia has claimed through its archipelagic status, has yet to be adopted as the main characteristic of the new IKN.

It will be unfortunate if Indonesia fails to make the new IKN reflects the country's maritime identity. The location for the IKN is strategically situated near the coastal area of East Kalimantan. It has proximity to the Makassar Strait, a central feature of the second of Indonesia's archipelagic sea lanes (Alur Laut Kepulauan Indonesia II, ALKI II) which is also connected to the Lombok Strait. As one of the world's choke points, these straits directly connect the Indian and Pacific oceans. The nearest designated port, Semayang Port in Balikpapan Bay, has been built to facilitate international shipping and long-distance sea routes. It is estimated that 420 large ships mostly sail through the Lombok and Makassar straits each year, carrying around 36 million tons of cargo.

On maritime identity, Indonesia has politically recommitted to its maritime development aspect by launching the Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF) vision in 2014, at the beginning of President Joko Widodo's administration. This vision aims to build up Indonesia's maritime capacity at the national and international levels. From building infrastructure that connects ports to building international shipping hubs and driving a regional and international maritime-centred foreign policy agenda, Indonesia has been proving its seriousness in embracing its maritime identity.

Introduction

The relocation of the Indonesian state capital city is not a new issue. Historically, this policy has been echoed in the eras of Indonesia's past presidents Sukarno, Suharto and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). The lessons that can be learnt from the relocation policies in these three presidential eras are related to top-down and reactionary policies to domestic and international problems. For example, the policymakers took into account security and geopolitical tensions (external concerns) and environmental risks (domestic concerns).

Across the different administrations, the presidents directly initiated a top-down policymaking process when responding to the changing conditions during their administrations. For President Sukarno, it was more about the need for a new identity as the glue of solidarity between Java and outside Java, and for symbols for Indonesia as a leading “third world” country post-decolonization. In the era of President Suharto, this focused on the need for a new economic centre for economic equity and for an independent city that was regionally and globally competitive. The next few transitional governments under B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid and Megawati Sukarnoputri arguably did not prioritize capital relocation. Instead, these presidents’ signature policy legacies included the first direct presidential elections (after Megawati), domestic reconciliation and anti-corruption drives. The idea of capital relocation returned under President SBY, whose policy was more of a reaction to the potential for bigger ecological disasters such as floods, the subsidence of the soil layer and uncontrolled population density in Jakarta.

Unlike the top-down relocation plans of Sukarno, Suharto and SBY, in the era of President Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) the moving of the capital city and building a new one called “Nusantara” (or Ibu Kota Negara, IKN) is a mixed policymaking agenda that includes both an elite-driven agenda and a bottom-up one. Advocacy for the relocation of the capital was provided by the “Vision Indonesia 2033” team (since 2008) with Andrinof Chaniago as the pioneer and initiator. When Andrinof was subsequently appointed Minister of National Development Planning/Head of National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), this idea was further developed into a policy draft paper starting in 2015. From there, a comprehensive agenda was formed, which eventually resulted in IKN Law No. 3 of 2022 (hereafter, UU IKN).

INTRODUCTION

The plan to relocate Indonesia's capital city (IKN) has finally come to its realization under President Joko Widodo's leadership. Jakarta claims that Nusantara, the new capital city now under construction, will be one of the most sustainable cities in the world. The term “Forest City” has been emphasized as the designated design slogan to accentuate an integrated human-nature approach, where about 75 per cent of the total landscape will be green open spaces. Walking and public transport will be the main modes of mobility in a city where main attractions and services can be accessed within 10 minutes of travel time for any commuter. Besides creating a sustainable city, the planners’ agenda aims to distribute or more evenly transfer economic and population growth out of Indonesia's main island of Java. The central government aims to create approximately 5 million local jobs by 2045,1 which will potentially attract massive in-migration from Java and other islands to the IKN area.

To successfully develop Nusantara, planners must engage in thorough planning. In the initial stage, the government made the plan to relocate the capital a priority in the National Mid-term Development Plan (RPJMN) 2020–2024. This was followed by the enactment of Decree No. 3 of 2022 on the IKN, which highlighted the cruciality of spatial planning as an instrument to guide the construction of a safe, convenient, productive, and sustainable capital city. The General Spatial Plan for the IKN (Presidential Decree 64/2022) will provide a macro-level reference for urban planning, which marks the inauguration of developing Nusantara. Considering the commencement of this megaproject, this chapter reviews and further discusses the related opportunities and challenges and identifies how spatial planning can play significant roles in Indonesia's urban development.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY

This chapter will emphasize the importance of spatial planning as an instrument for development planning in the megaproject of Nusantara. In doing so, the authors observe the social and environmental issues concerned, to provide initial information to identify the potential implications for spatial planning. Separately, the authors initiated a workshop using the Synergistics method3 to observe institutional issues within the planning framework and to identify the potential forward pathways for spatial planning.

I welcome the publication of The Road to Nusantara: Process, Challenges and Opportunities, co-published by Singapore's ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and Indonesia's National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN). This book aims to capture the multi-faceted development aspects of Indonesia's future national capital, Nusantara, and critically evaluates some challenges and opportunities that the development of the city may bring.

The book provides readers with a wide range of vantage points that inform the development of this historical project. Such enriching perspectives are particularly valuable for us at the Nusantara National Capital Authority (NNCA), which is tasked to plan and coordinate the development of the city. The NNCA will subsequently oversee the government's transition to Nusantara before eventually becoming the city's administrator.

As I shared at the ISEAS-BRIN conference in October 2022, which is the foundation for this publication, Nusantara is not a typical city-building infrastructural project. A key element of the “Indonesia 2045” vision, Nusantara demonstrates Indonesia's effort to embrace new working cultures and innovative ways of thinking that will allow the nation to tackle future global challenges.

As such, the ultimate goal is to create a city that is both liveable and lovable, built atop the principles of green, smart, inclusive, resilient and sustainable. This model city can then be replicated when developing other cities in Indonesia, and ultimately help the nation to leapfrog to become a more prosperous and sustainable country.

One prime instance that illustrates the new paradigm is a grand design to make Nusantara a “sustainable forest city”, which I believe will be the first in the world for a national capital. Key to this design is the plan to limit the development of the city's built-up environment to only about 25 per cent of the total land area. The remaining area will be retained as a green area, including 65 per cent that will be transformed from a production forest into a tropical forest.

To accomplish this plan, the NNCA will bring back the lush tropical forest and its thriving ecology through a “reforestation process”.

INTRODUCTION

Jakarta as Indonesia's capital has a long history of creating the idea of a modern Indonesia. Sukarno, the first president, who had architectural training, dreamed of Jakarta as a city with an ideal society. His speech in 1962 invited Indonesians to dream of an ideal city: one that was not only pleasing to the eye but that also had skyscrapers, wide streets, great monuments, and even housing with a “sense of greatness”. Efforts to realize said ideal modern city have been made by the governors and the central government. Unlike Sukarno, who prioritized the construction of city symbols that reflected grandness and modernity, Ali Sadikin, the governor who was considered the most successful in building Jakarta, made efforts to build better residential areas through the Muhammad Husni Thamrin (MHT) project. However, Jakarta was not built solely by engineers and regional planners with urban planning tools based on Western science (e.g., the zoning system) but also by “individuals and groups who have the authority, capital, vision and will to implement substantial new works, often breaking existing planning rules or avoiding them with the help of higher political authorities, and most importantly, built incrementally by residents”. In its current form, Jakarta is more like a “gigantic Kampung” with “conflicting images” and “conflicting directions”.

Burdened with traffic congestion issues, air pollution, water pollution, and land subsidence to the point where part of it is at risk of sinking, Jakarta can no longer be considered representative of the modern state and people of Indonesia. A new state capital (Ibu Kota Negara, IKN) must be built so that the vision of a developed country can be realized. This is a country that is aware of environmental problems and smart technology, and one that can improve economic development (that is, the Indonesiacentric concept of President Joko Widodo).

Introduction

The opening is a direct quote from an interview with a person (“M”) from the Balik tribe, one of the indigenous groups that have resided for generations in the new IKN location. There are concerns that the IKN development project could further marginalize the Balik tribe, who were already marginalized due to the development of Balikpapan City as an oil-producing and oil-processing town. The Balik tribe has argued that the transfer of IKN is an elitist, centralized policy, as it is lacking meaningful participation from the community in the planning process. This opinion is based on their experience of being excluded at all stages of construction, including when the government of the subdistrict marked the land for the planned location of the national capital. When the Balik tribe informed the government of the subdistrict about the capital transfer's possible effect on this tribe, the subdistrict government claimed not to understand the matter because the determination was in the hand of the central government.

The IKN Law was ratified on 7 December 2021, after Indonesia's legislature considered and passed the proposed law in just forty-two days. The bill had incurred public resistance because public involvement in the deliberation process was insignificant. Procedurally speaking, indigenous peoples should have been involved in the initial consultation on IKN because they have long resided in the area to which the national capital will be moved. Apart from that, the IKN Law substantially contradicts at least eight articles in the 1945 Constitution. For instance, Article 1(2) of the Constitution stipulates that “sovereignty is in the hands of the people and implemented according to the 1945 Constitution” while Article 18B(2) stipulates that the State recognizes and respects customary law communities and their traditional rights, as long as they exist and abide by the principles of the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia.

The upcoming capital city relocation will have an important impact on and contribution towards Indonesian development, especially to reduce the gap between Java and outside Java Island, and to emphasize the spirit of Indonesia in Indonesia's archipelago. The new capital city or Ibu Kota Negara (IKN) is named “Nusantara”, a word representing this archipelago.

Contributing to the preparation for Nusantara in terms of policy design and a political framework, I am grateful that through this important book, our researchers at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) have contributed to the production of academic and professional knowledge on the preparation and development of Indonesia's new capital city. Their contributions will not only enrich government policies but also provide evidence-based research on the establishment of the IKN.

The contributors to the book have successfully discussed the capital city relocation from diverse perspectives and by examining wide-ranging issues. These include the historical and political perspectives on capital relocation, the ecological and socio-economic implications of the relocation, as well as the cultural and identity aspects of the new capital city. The rich, critical, and in-depth knowledge covered by the book delighted me. Through the discussion, we hope that the discussion of the capital city relocation will benefit all, in line with the main purpose of Nusantara—to be a global city for all.

Hopefully, this book will be the first and most-cited scholarly work on the current Indonesian capital city relocation project. I thank all the contributors and editors for their hard work in completing this masterpiece. I believe the readers will find this book engaging in every chapter and that the book will stimulate future discussions and deeper knowledge of Indonesia's capital city relocation.

BRIN's work on the IKN certainly does not stop with the publication of this book. In 2023, one of the signature programmes in the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (ISSH), for instance, is on the challenges of the IKN which need to be addressed or dealt with by the Indonesian government.

INTRODUCTION

In March 2022, several activists applied for a Constitutional Court judicial review of Indonesia's Law on the State's Capital (UU IKN). The law had been passed by the legislature and signed into law by President Joko Widodo in February 2022. The applicants included the Head of Legal Affairs of Muhammadiyah, Busyro Muqoddas, the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara, AMAN), the Mining Advocacy Network (Jaringan Advokasi Tambang, JATAM),3 the Indonesian Forum for Living Environment (WALHI) and the people of North Penajam Paser district, whose residential area is the designated core zone of the new capital city, Nusantara.

The applicants claimed that the government had hastily passed the law without clearly stipulating the rights of the local residents; that the Parliament's deliberation of the law had been overly brief, taking only seventeen days from first reading to its passage, which meant that there had been little to no public participation in the deliberations; and that this lack of public participation meant that the IKN Law conflicted with Laws No. 12/2011 and 15/2019 on the Creation of Laws. The applicants, therefore, claimed that the law-making process had not sufficiently considered the constitutional rights of the affected indigenous communities in the designated IKN area at a time when the communities were struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic and economic difficulties.

Unfortunately, the Constitutional Court rejected this application due to the technical reason that it was submitted on the forty-sixth day after the issuance of UU IKN, a day past the stipulated timeframe that applications for judicial review must be submitted within forty-five days after a law is first gazetted.

The fact that many prominent civil society organizations (CSOs) had banded together to voice their concerns about the IKN Law has highlighted Indonesian civil society's stance against the IKN megaproject and its potential adverse impact on a range of issues and individuals. This chapter will explore civil society's concerns through the examples of AMAN's and JATAM's advocacy. Due to civil society's traditional position between “state” and “society”, CSOs usually take on the task of articulating society's concerns against what they perceive as potentially unfair or detrimental state policies.

Introduction

The end of Indonesia's authoritarian regime in 1998 was the turning point for the state to apply substantive democracy and decentralization by devolving authority to local governments. The commitment to abandon centralization was shown in the amendment of Indonesia's 1945 Constitution by emphasizing the devolution of authority. The Constitution allows regions to have special autonomy, national recognition for those that have a history related to nation-building, and the uniqueness of local cultures and identities.1 Thus, the autonomy granted to all local governments is not limited to administrative and fiscal aspects. Decentralization policy also allows political autonomy, where local governments can administer their regional policies after deliberations in democratically elected regional parliaments. Direct popular elections for the heads of local governments were introduced in 2005.

The commitment to adopt extensive decentralization was also shown in giving the Indonesian capital of Jakarta the status of a special region with greater autonomy under Law No. 34 of 1999 on the Provincial Government of the Special Capital Region of Indonesia. In this arrangement, Jakarta as the state's capital can exercise local government authority in all areas of government affairs excluding five national competencies: national defence and security, fiscal, monetary, judicial and religious matters. The difference (from other local governments) is that only a single structure of autonomy is applied to Jakarta at the provincial level: districts of Jakarta have only administrative power, which allows Jakarta to respond agilely, efficiently, and effectively.

In 2007, in amending Law No. 34 of 1999, the national government granted the special capital region of Jakarta more political autonomy by enacting Law No. 29 of 2007. In this regulation, the Regional House of Representatives (DPRD) no longer decides who the governor of Jakarta is. The new arrangements give more political autonomy by allowing the direct (popular) election of the governor and vice-governor of Jakarta. As a special region, however, a gubernatorial candidate must obtain a majority (50 per cent + 1) vote to win the election.2 This differs from the electoral system in other local governments, where a candidate can win the election by earning the most votes (even if this is less than 50 per cent majority).

INTRODUCTION

Law No. 3 of 2022 on Indonesia's State Capital City (Ibu Kota Negara, IKN) has provided a legal framework for the development of Nusantara, the new capital city of Indonesia. The IKN's development is estimated to be accompanied by the mass in-migration of construction workers, civil servants and their family members, academics and researchers, and tertiary students. Around 1.7 to 1.9 million people are estimated to inhabit the new capital by 2045.

The residential mobility of around 250,000 construction workers and civil servants in 2024 would be the main feature of the initial phases of the capital relocation. Public service workers from particular institutions are prioritized to move earlier to Nusantara. These include the coordinating ministries, the triumvirate of the Ministries of Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and Defence, government agencies supporting the offices of the president and vice president and those responsible for development planning and budgeting, and law enforcement. In addition, civil servants from ministries that directly support the development of the IKN and agencies that work on basic needs services and human capital development are also targeted to migrate earlier. However, Annex II of the law states that not all public sector workers would be posted to the IKN. Several criteria have been defined as bases to assess how qualified civil servants are for the relocation, including their highest educational attainment, retirement age and performance evaluation.

In addition to being the centre of government-related activities, the IKN is designed to provide world-class tertiary education institutions focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), as well as specialized skills training. Although Indonesia has become one of the largest and fastest-growing tertiary education systems in the world, with approximately 7.6 million students enrolled in over 3,100 institutions, Indonesia's tertiary education system still faces problems like considerable variations in the quality of institutions. Based on the clustering of higher education institutions (HEIs) by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2020, only fifteen Indonesian universities are acknowledged to have “excellent” academic performance and are classified in the first cluster.

Introduction

“Citizen participation” can be defined as the active involvement of the general public in the government's decision-making process to influence and address issues of public concern. It covers a range of practices, from volunteering to political participation. Civic participation is similar, although it includes involvement in non-political activities. The advancement in digital technologies has enabled collective participation and civil actions, encouraging greater participation, better decision-making and more trust.

Among different forms of civic participation, crowdfunding has emerged as one type of public participation in a democratic environment. The ability to accept small amounts of money from a larger number of people positions crowdfunding as a platform for citizens to express their views on services that they require and their civic rights. It allows citizens to participate in society and the government by donating their resources as an act of support for particular programmes or projects. It also allows social movements to pool financial resources from the public relatively quickly. This potential should be emphasized because a system that handles and provides civic services would result in increased citizen participation. Crowdfunding also allows citizens residing outside the country, or diaspora, to participate in the projects. The diaspora community is said to be more willing to participate in smaller-scale but beneficial initiatives that many larger project backers would not pursue. With an expected number of 8 million Indonesians in the diaspora with an average monthly income of US$1,999,7 this potential should not be overlooked.

In August 2019, the Indonesian government announced its plan to move the capital from Jakarta to a new city in East Kalimantan province. The new capital is named Nusantara (also called IKN) and its construction is targeted to be completed by 2045. Government officials are set to move to the new capital in stages. The development is divided into three main stages: developing the urban infrastructure, developing the city along with the economic sector and moving government officials to the new capital, then finally increasing connectivity with other cities near the IKN.