We analyse dramatic land transformations in the greater Jakarta metropolitan area since 1988: large-scale private-sector development projects in central city and peri-urban locations. These transformations are shaped both by Jakarta's shifting conjunctural positionality within global political economic processes and by Indonesia's hybrid political economy. While influenced by neoliberalisation, Indonesia's political economy is a hybrid formation, in which neoliberalisation coevolves with long-standing, resilient oligarchic power structures and contestations by the urban majority. Three persistent features shape these transformations: the predominance of large Indonesian conglomerates' development arms and stand-alone developers; the shaping role of elite informal networks connecting the development industry with state actors; and steadily increasing foreign involvement and investment in the development industry, accelerating recently. We identify three eras characterised by distinct types of urban transformation. Under autocratic neoliberalising urbanism (1988-1997) peri-urban shopping centre development predominated, with large Indonesian developers taking advantage of close links with the Suharto family. The increased
This editorial introduces a special virtual issue aimed at providing online access to articles that can contribute to the work of coming to geographical terms with the COVID-19 pandemic. It outlines seven sub-themes of enquiry and analysis that are especially useful for contextualising coronavirus geographically. These are explored in turn as geographies of: (1) infection, (2) vulnerability, (3) resilience, (4) blame, (5) immunisation, (6) interdependence, and (7) care. In each case, connections are made between publications that are included in the special virtual issue and other more recent writings related specifically to COVID-19. In an effort to make these connections as useful as possible to geographers who have been drafted into online teaching in and about the pandemic, hyperlinks are used throughout to highlight additional online resources and reports.
In the post-2008 global economy, infrastructure development and financing have risen to the top of the development agenda, emerging as a contested field for global investments involving seemingly divergent interests, objectives, rationalities and practices. Whereas multilateral development banks such as the World Bank advocate the market-based public-private partnership aimed at attracting private finance and deepening marketized governance, China is forging a state-capitalist alternative through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These models are far from mutually exclusive. Through a conjunctural approach, the paper examines the broader trade and financial interdependencies in which these models are entangled, and the geopolitical-economic objectives enframing the emergent infrastructure regime. These are explored vis-à-vis Indonesian infrastructure projects, framed by competition between China and Japan.
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