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).