Cultural construction of Jakarta : design, planning, and development in Jabotabek, 1980-1997

Jakarta's physical restructuring during the 1980s and 1990s was largely the result of choices made by a small circle of business and political elite surrounding President Suharto (1966-1998) in emulation of North American urban form. The insights of urban regime theory are useful in moderating any lingering economic determinism common in political economy and globalization approaches but fail to account for the successes of Suharto's growth coalition. With media controls setting the terms of reference for public discourse, Suharto' s "New Order" regime deployed a rhetoric of "development," functioning as the overarching paradigm to coordinate individual and collective values, priorities, and assumptions while reinforcing both fears of violent repression and aspirations for the trappings of modernization. Examination of specific historical processes reveals that, unlike their dominance in the West, economic forces operated within, and subordinate to, long-standing culturally-defined structures of power, as but one of a long history of syncretically adapted forms imported from foreign sources. With culture defining the goals and means of the controlling elite, the restructuring of architecture, urban design, and planning of the Jakarta Metropolitan Area became, not just a reflection of the dominant culture, but one of the most significant instruments for achieving the desired social order. The imagery employed in the design and marketing of Jabotabek suburban real estate development played off interwoven projections of life imagined to exist in the developed West (based largely on American television and film), while the internal spaces of California-style houses reveal a hybrid formation reflecting persistent social relationships and everyday practices.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Cowherd, Robert, 1961-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stanford Anderson.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8514

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8514