Urban development in a decentralized Indonesia: Two Success Stories?
The year 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of the implementation of Indonesia's regional autonomy laws. This paper considers implications of more than a decade of decentralized governance for urban development in Indonesia. After a brief historical overview and consideration of the
rationale for political and administrative decentralization in that national context, we examine a range of critical perspectives on policy outcomes. Both media coverage and academic analyses have overwhelmingly cast decentralized governance as it has been implemented in Indonesia in a negative
light. As a corrective to this, we have sought to identify positive outcomes and possibilities associated with Indonesia's large-scale decentralization project. In particular, we detail the cases of two cities which have been cast in a variety of rankings and media representations as success
stories of urban development through decentralized governance: Solo (or Surakarta as the city is also formally named) and Surabaya. In the final section of the paper, we critically evaluate these two cases and discuss their wider implications.
Keywords: DECENTRALIZATION; INDONESIA; REGIONAL AUTONOMY; SOLO; SURABAYA
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 December 2013
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