Growth of a Megacity
Planning Jakarta in the Post-Suburban Era
Will be published approx. on 31. March 2026
Book
Hardback
292 pages
979-8-8807-0147-6 (ISBN)
Description
Jakarta, one of the largest metropolitan areas in Southeast Asia, has grown from 150,000 residents in the first half of the twentieth century to more than 31 million in 2024. This explosive growth has reshaped the Jakarta Metropolitan Area (JMA), also known as Jabodetabek, presenting complex challenges and highlighting the critical role of urban planning. This edited volume explores Jakarta's evolving urban landscape through the lens of post-suburbanization. While the city exhibits traits of post-suburban development, its central areas continue to attract population and investment, suggesting a unique, early-stage form of post-suburban growth. Across the inner city and surrounding suburbs, physical, social, and economic transformations are underway-marked by uneven patterns of inclusion, displacement, and redevelopment.
The book adopts a multi-dimensional perspective, examining changes in residential, industrial, and commercial development, alongside impacts on employment, infrastructure, environmental degradation, and social dynamics such as segregation and gentrification. As the first comprehensive study of Jakarta's post-suburbanization, this volume brings together twenty-two contributors, including academics, planners, urban designers, and architects, to assess planning practices and policy responses. Organized into four thematic sections-economic development, environmental challenges, housing and public space, and gentrification and displacement-it offers critical insights and forward-looking strategies for shaping the JMA over the next twenty years.
A vital contribution to urban planning literature in Indonesia, Growth of a Megacity provides a timely and accessible analysis for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners navigating Jakarta's complex urban future.
The book adopts a multi-dimensional perspective, examining changes in residential, industrial, and commercial development, alongside impacts on employment, infrastructure, environmental degradation, and social dynamics such as segregation and gentrification. As the first comprehensive study of Jakarta's post-suburbanization, this volume brings together twenty-two contributors, including academics, planners, urban designers, and architects, to assess planning practices and policy responses. Organized into four thematic sections-economic development, environmental challenges, housing and public space, and gentrification and displacement-it offers critical insights and forward-looking strategies for shaping the JMA over the next twenty years.
A vital contribution to urban planning literature in Indonesia, Growth of a Megacity provides a timely and accessible analysis for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners navigating Jakarta's complex urban future.
Reviews / Votes
"The meticulously crafted and insightfully argued contributions to this fresh new Rukmana/Roitman study of Jakarta explores the megacity's profound spatial, demographic, economic, and political transformations over the past two decades. The contributors examine the economic restructuring of the urban periphery, environmental degradation and accompanying climate hazards throughout the metropolis, and gentrification processes occurring both inside the city and its increasingly urbanized suburbs. Most important, the contributors identify not just those benefitting from post-suburbanization but also the larger share of those still being left out. Growth of a Megacity pinpoints the interventions needed to realize an inclusive post-suburban metropolis." - Christopher Silver, professor emeritus, University of Florida"One of the most alluring and studied megacities of the Global South, Jakarta's myriad complexities and evolving challenges continue to intrigue scholars. Rukmana and Roitman have curated laudable attention to less appreciated contemporary dynamics shaping this behemoth, which, as they argue, embody a unique "post-suburban" phenomenon emergent in southern urban planning and development. The book's historical and prognostic insights into its spatial, ecological, institutional, and equity dimensions are instructive for familiar observers and the uninitiated alike. The welcome contributions by emerging scholars of Indonesian urbanization should encourage further inquiry into cities undergoing post-suburban turns elsewhere, on the archipelago and beyond." - Ashok Das, professor, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
"This book provides a comprehensive account of Jakarta in the post-suburban era. As one of the fastest-growing megacities in the Global South, Jakarta represents a complex urban landscape shaped by rapid economic expansion, environmental pressures, spatial transformation, and social change. The book offers a focused examination of these dynamics within the context of a megacity in the Global South, presenting an integrated analysis of economic, environmental, physical, and social dimensions. The volume delivers valuable insights into contemporary urban development. It is a highly recommended resource for practitioners, researchers, and academics interested in urban studies, planning, and the evolving challenges of megacities." - Sri Maryati, professor, Institut Teknologi Bandung
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Honolulu, HI
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Illustrations
20 b&w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 237 mm
Width: 159 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
546 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-8807-0147-6 (9798880701476)
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Schweitzer Classification