Understanding Indonesia’s gated communities and their relationship with inequality

Abstract

Income inequality continues to increase worldwide and is highly visible in cities. This rising income inequality, along with the growing upper-middle class, has accelerated the development of gated communities (GC) as a desired housing for the ‘successful’ groups and a manifestation of how the city reproduces inequality. We analyze GC development in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and offer a typology for this housing option in that country where income inequality has been growing and is now a serious government concern. Although the early 2000s saw isolated GC in only a few cities, now they are developing vigorously. This article contributes twofold. First, it provides evidence on the emergence and features of GC. Second, it shows a relationship between income inequality, social differences and GC development for upper-middle class residents in Indonesia. We argue that there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between inequality and GC: increasing income inequality leads to higher number of GC and this material artefact entrenches ‘emplaced inequality’.

Keywords:

• Income inequality
• emplaced inequality
• gated communities
• social differences
• Indonesia

Acknowledgements

We deeply thank all the interviewees who shared their views and time with us. We are also very grateful to the research assistance provided by Andri Supriatna, Rusli Cahyadi, Sita Rahmani, Bhita Hervita, Shandy Situmorang, Putri Sortaria, Luh Kitty Katherina, Wahyu Astuti, Universitas Tarumanagara (Department of Urban and Real Estate Planning) and Universitas Gadjah Mada (Department of Architecture and Planning). We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. All errors remain our responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

The project was funded by The University of Queensland (UQECR-2016000543).

Notes

1 For a list of SDGs, visit https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals.html

2 The Gini coefficient measures income inequality and gets values from 0 to 1 (or 0–100) considering 0 as perfect equity and 1 (or 100) as total inequality.

3 These layers of inequality resonate with the three dimensions of space developed by Gieryn (2000): geographical location, material form and meaning.

4 The population of Jakarta Metropolitan Area (Jabodetabek) is estimated in 30 million residents, whereas Yogyakarta Metropolitan Area has over 2.5 million residents (http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/jakarta-population/ and Badan Pusat Statistik, 2018b).

5 More than 450 developers went out of business between 1996 and 2001 in Jakarta Metropolitan Area (Firman, 2004).

6 Jabodetabek refers to greater Jakarta and stands for Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi.

7 We refer to the interviewees according to their role and city as follows: YD: Yogyakarta Developer; YLG: Yogyakarta Local Government; YGCR: Yogyakarta Gated Community Resident; YOR: Yogyakarta Outside Resident; YA: Yogyakarta Academic; JD: Jakarta Developer; JLG: Jakarta Local Government; JGCR: Jakarta Gated Community Resident; and JOR: Jakarta Outside Resident.

8 There are different estimates for the national housing backlog, with online sources suggesting between 13.5 and 15 million housing deficit (Global Business Guide Indonesia, 2017) and some government sources mentioning at least 11 million unit deficit and saying that this data has not been carefully monitored and therefore it is imprecise (Republic of Indonesia, 2016).

9 The phenomenon of vacant houses within GC has also been documented for Buenos Aires, Argentina (Pugliese, 2009).

10 In examining alienation in Indonesia, Gochoco-Bautista et al. (2013) build on Esteban and Ray’s (1994) notions of identification and alienation. Identification refers to ‘the sense of belonging and unity that an individual feels with others’ (Gochoco-Bautista et al., 2013, p. 107); while alienation ‘is an individual’s sense of being distinct or different from another individual or group, fuelled by his [or her] notion of identification with others within his own group’ (p. 107).

11 The first typology is for US GC (Blakely & Snyder, 1997) and the second one is for Argentinean GC (Svampa, 2001).

12 These prices have been taken from websites of real-estate agencies in Indonesia in January 2019. These sources are www.olx.co.id, www.99.co/id, www.rumahdijual.com, www.rumah123.com. These sources are used when prices of housing in Indonesia are given.

13 The National Bureau of Statistics in Indonesia does not collect data on income. Expenditure is usually estimated as a proxy indicator.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sonia Roitman

Sonia Roitman is a senior lecturer in development planning at The University of Queensland. Her work examines urban inequalities through the analysis of housing policies, segregation and community development in global south cities. More information can be found at https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/2908.

Redento B. Recio

Redento B. Recio is a research fellow at the University of Melbourne's Informal Urbanism (InfUr) research hub. His PhD project examined street vending and urban governance issues in Metro Manila's Baclaran district. He is currently undertaking a study on the role of informal livelihoods in disaster recovery.