Growth of a Megacity

Deden Rukmana is a professor and the director of the Master of City and Regional Planning program at the University of Texas at Arlington.Sonia Roitman is associate professor in development planning at the University of Queensland, Australia.

"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 Mānoa