Urban resilience, a new urban development and governance
agenda, is being rolled out from the top... more Urban resilience, a new urban development and governance agenda, is being rolled out from the top down by a network of public, private, non-profit sector actors forming a global urban resilience complex: producing norms that circulate globally, creating assessment tools rendering urban resilience technical and managerial, and commodifying urban resilience such that private sector involvement becomes integral to urban development planning and governance. The Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilience Cities Program is at the center of this complex, working with the World Bank, global consultants, NGOs, and private sector service providers to enroll cities, develop and circulate urban resilience assessment tools, and create a market catalyzed by the notion of a resilience dividend. Notwithstanding the claim of this program being open and inclusive, aspects of its initial operationalization in Jakarta suggest that urban resilience assessment tools preempt alternative understandings of urban resilience and marginalizing voices of the city's most vulnerable populations.
We analyse dramatic land transformations in the greater Jakarta metropolitan area since 1988:larg... more We analyse dramatic land transformations in the greater Jakarta metropolitan area since 1988:large-scale private-sector development projects in central city and peri-urban locations. These transformations are shaped both by Jakarta’s shifting conjunctural positionality within global political economic processes and by Indonesia’s hybrid political economy. While influenced by neoliberalisation, Indonesia’s political economy is a hybrid formation, in which neoliberalisation coevolves with long-standing, resilient oligarchic power structures and contestations by the urban majority. Three persistent features shape these transformations: the predominance of large Indonesian conglomerates’ development arms and stand-alone developers; the shaping role of elite informal networks connecting the development industry with state actors; and steadily increasing foreign involvement and investment in the development industry, accelerating recently. We identify three eras characterised by distinct types of urban transformation. Under autocratic neoliberalising urbanism (1988–1997) peri-urban shopping centre development predominated, with large Indonesian developers taking advantage of close links with the Suharto family. The increased indebtedness of these firms became debilitating after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Thus post-Suharto democratic neoliberalising urbanism (1998–2005) was a period of minimal investment, except for shopping centres in DKI Jakarta facilitating a consumption-led strategy of recovery from 1997, and the active restructuring of elite informality. Rescaled neoliberalising urbanism (2006–present) saw the recovery of major developers, renewed access to finance, including foreign capital, and the construction of ever-more spectacular integrated superblock developments in DKI Jakarta and peri-urban new towns.
Across cities of the global South, major initiatives are underway to assemble land from informal ... more Across cities of the global South, major initiatives are underway to assemble land from informal settlements in order to make it available for large-scale infrastructure and commercial real estate projects. Driven by global city aspirations, profit-seeking developers, demands from emergent middle classes for modern residential, consumption and recreational spaces, and, last but not least, the availability of finance, these land transformations seek to commodify and enclose residential urban commons and involve the displacement of thousands of urban residents. Through an examination of two field sites, a 'legal' kampung where land is being acquired through negotiations between kampung residents with land rights and developers' land brokers, and two 'illegal' kampungs whose residents were evicted in the name of flood mitigation, we conclude that the default theory for explaining these processes-accumulation by dispossession-is inadequate for capturing the variegated and complex nature of such processes. By thinking through Jakarta, we seek to provincialize the dominant concept of accumulation by dispossession, proposing an extension that we suggest is better attuned to capture the distinct features of Southern cities: Contested accumulations through displacement. A dramatic urban land transformation is underway across Asian cities and many other cities of the post-colony. In the context of the variegated neoliberalization of global urbanism, conjoined with political elites' intents that their city achieve world class status, an emergent middle class aspiring to western urban lifestyles, and the attractiveness of real estate as an investment opportunity, developers have been converting informally settled spaces of an urban commons into privatized, commodifiable land assets. This is a struggle over space that plays out locally, while influenced by supra-, inter-and national scale developments. These processes are not only variegated but also contested: Those engaged in these struggles
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2018
Urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberal urban governance are assuming new forms under finance-dom... more Urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberal urban governance are assuming new forms under finance-dominated accumulation. We examine and contribute to theorizing the mechanisms through which urban governance is financialized, taking as a case study JESSICA, one of the European Union's initiatives to implement an 'urban sensitive' policy for sustainable and integrated development. Like other initiatives promoting financialization, JESSICA deploys the logic of finance to select and fund urban social initiatives and development projects on the basis of their potential return on investment (ROI). Understanding this process requires placing questions of political economy––how urban governance is shaped by the broader political-economic context––with questions of governmentality––how stakeholders are enrolled in and come to take for granted new governance initiatives. Following the multi-scalar institutional infrastructure is crucial to understanding how this works. Taking a relational multi-scalar approach, we trace how changes at the supranational scale filter down to shape urban policy selection and performance in Sofia, Bulgaria, where we document how ROI calculations conflict with social welfare priorities. Contrasts between the trajectory of financialization of urban governance in the European Union and the United States demonstrate how this is geographically variegated, shaped by the broader context/conjuncture within which such financialization is embedded.
Across cities of the global South, major initiatives are underway to assemble land from informal ... more Across cities of the global South, major initiatives are underway to assemble land from informal settlements in order to make it available for large-scale infrastructure and commercial real estate projects. Driven by global city aspirations, profit-seeking developers, demands from emergent middle classes for modern residential, consumption and recreational spaces, and, last but not least, the availability of finance, these land transformations seek to commodify and enclose residential urban commons and involve the displacement of thousands of urban residents. Through an examination of two field sites, a 'legal' kampung where land is being acquired through negotiations between kampung residents with land rights and developers' land brokers, and two 'illegal' kampungs whose residents were evicted in the name of flood mitigation, we conclude that the default theory for explaining these processes—accumulation by dispossession—is inadequate for capturing the variegated and complex nature of such processes. By thinking through Jakarta, we seek to provincialize the dominant concept of accumulation by dispossession, proposing an extension that we suggest is better attuned to capture the distinct features of Southern cities: Contested accumulations through displacement. A dramatic urban land transformation is underway across Asian cities and many other cities of the post-colony. In the context of the variegated neoliberalization of global urbanism, conjoined with political elites' intents that their city achieve world class status, an emergent middle class aspiring to western urban lifestyles, and the attractiveness of real estate as an investment opportunity, developers have been converting informally settled spaces of an urban commons into privatized, commodifiable land assets. This is a struggle over space that plays out locally, while influenced by supra-, inter-and national scale developments. These processes are not only variegated but also contested: Those engaged in these struggles
This special issue, papers presented at an Urban Studies Foundation-funded conference in Jakarta ... more This special issue, papers presented at an Urban Studies Foundation-funded conference in Jakarta (March 2011), examines the current 'urban century' in terms of three revolutions. Revolutions from above index the logics and norms of mainstream global urbanism, particularly the form they have taken as policymakers work with municipal officials worldwide to organise urban development around neoliberal norms. Revolutions from below refer to the multifaceted contestations of global urbanism that take place in and around cities, ranging from urban street demonstrations and occupations (such as those riveting the world in early 2011 when these papers were written) to the quotidian actions of those pursuing politics and livelihoods that subvert the norms of mainstream global urbanism. It also highlights conceptual revolutions, referencing the ongoing challenge of reconceptualising urban theory from the South -not simply as a hemispheric location or geopolitical category but an epistemological stance, staged from many different locations but Downloaded from always fraught with the differentials of power and the weight of historical geographies. Drawing on the insights of scholars writing from, and not just about, such locations, a further iteration in this 'southern' turn of urban theorising is proposed. This spatio-temporal conjunctural approach emphasises how the specificity of cities -their existence as entities that are at once singular and universal -emerges from spatio-temporal dynamics, connectivities and horizontal and vertical relations. Practically, such scholarship entails taking the field seriously through collaborative work that is multi-sited, engages people along the spectrum of academics and activists, and is presented before and scrutinised by multiple publics.
Recent urban scholarship celebrates the increased cultural and ethnic diversity of contemporary c... more Recent urban scholarship celebrates the increased cultural and ethnic diversity of contemporary cities as promoting conviviality and intercultural sensibilities. The contact hypothesis, and immigrant integration policies drawing on it similarly stress the importance of increased face-to- face contact for reducing inter-group prejudice and conflict. Drawing on ethnographic research in eastern Berlin, this paper examines spaces of encounters between local residents and recent immigrants and their potential for decreasing negative stereotypes, prejudice and conflict. We find that contact between Russian Aussiedler and local German residents in public and quasi- public spaces remains fleeting, often reinforcing pre-existing stereotypes. Local immigrant integration projects, despite their intentions of increasing contact between migrant and non- migrant residents, often fail to provide opportunities for deeper contact. On the other hand, sustained and close encounters are enabled in spaces of neighborhood community centers, where immigrants and native residents work side-by-side on common projects. These sustained encounters engender more empathy and positive attitudes towards individual immigrants but these are not scaled up to the group, contradicting claims of recent contact theorists. We
suggest that scholars and integration practitioners be cautious of overoptimistic assumptions about how encounters across difference can contribute to decreasing resentment and interethnic conflict, as these are underwritten by much broader processes of marginalization and deeply entrenched unequal power relations.
This article examines the political and spatial registers of struggles against exclusion- ary loc... more This article examines the political and spatial registers of struggles against exclusion- ary local immigration policies and for more welcoming policies in the Washington DC metropolitan area, one of the hotspots for both local anti-immigration policies and immigrant advocacy in the United States. We conceptualize immigrant advocacy not simply as an alliance, but instead as an assemblage that brings together a diverse set of differently positioned actors and nonhuman actants. The assemblage enacts a diverse politics that deploys different forms of activism, while engaging different publics (e.g., religious communities, unions, the larger public sphere in public spaces, etc.) and the state in complex ways. From acting outside the state to engaging in claims-making towards the state, immigrant advocates are making claims and actions that challenge and go beyond dominant conceptions of citizenship rights and liberal democratic politics. The spatial register is similarly diverse. The immigrant advocacy assemblage is confronted with and enacts a different politics of place in central cities and inner- and outer-ring suburbs. Contestations of exclusionary local policies, however, are not simply about a local politics of place. To the contrary, some actors and actants in the assemblage are actively involved in extra-local networking, collaborating across jur- isdictional boundaries—between central cities and inner-and outer-ring suburbs within the Washington DC metropolitan area and across the United States. The complexities of these contestations call into question post-political narratives of “proper” politics, underscoring the need for an empirically grounded critical theory of democracy. This article contributes to this task by providing a geographically and historically sensitive analysis of the immigrant advocacy assemblage.
Urban resilience, a new urban development and governance
agenda, is being rolled out from the top... more Urban resilience, a new urban development and governance agenda, is being rolled out from the top down by a network of public, private, non-profit sector actors forming a global urban resilience complex: producing norms that circulate globally, creating assessment tools rendering urban resilience technical and managerial, and commodifying urban resilience such that private sector involvement becomes integral to urban development planning and governance. The Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilience Cities Program is at the center of this complex, working with the World Bank, global consultants, NGOs, and private sector service providers to enroll cities, develop and circulate urban resilience assessment tools, and create a market catalyzed by the notion of a resilience dividend. Notwithstanding the claim of this program being open and inclusive, aspects of its initial operationalization in Jakarta suggest that urban resilience assessment tools preempt alternative understandings of urban resilience and marginalizing voices of the city's most vulnerable populations.
We analyse dramatic land transformations in the greater Jakarta metropolitan area since 1988:larg... more We analyse dramatic land transformations in the greater Jakarta metropolitan area since 1988:large-scale private-sector development projects in central city and peri-urban locations. These transformations are shaped both by Jakarta’s shifting conjunctural positionality within global political economic processes and by Indonesia’s hybrid political economy. While influenced by neoliberalisation, Indonesia’s political economy is a hybrid formation, in which neoliberalisation coevolves with long-standing, resilient oligarchic power structures and contestations by the urban majority. Three persistent features shape these transformations: the predominance of large Indonesian conglomerates’ development arms and stand-alone developers; the shaping role of elite informal networks connecting the development industry with state actors; and steadily increasing foreign involvement and investment in the development industry, accelerating recently. We identify three eras characterised by distinct types of urban transformation. Under autocratic neoliberalising urbanism (1988–1997) peri-urban shopping centre development predominated, with large Indonesian developers taking advantage of close links with the Suharto family. The increased indebtedness of these firms became debilitating after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Thus post-Suharto democratic neoliberalising urbanism (1998–2005) was a period of minimal investment, except for shopping centres in DKI Jakarta facilitating a consumption-led strategy of recovery from 1997, and the active restructuring of elite informality. Rescaled neoliberalising urbanism (2006–present) saw the recovery of major developers, renewed access to finance, including foreign capital, and the construction of ever-more spectacular integrated superblock developments in DKI Jakarta and peri-urban new towns.
Across cities of the global South, major initiatives are underway to assemble land from informal ... more Across cities of the global South, major initiatives are underway to assemble land from informal settlements in order to make it available for large-scale infrastructure and commercial real estate projects. Driven by global city aspirations, profit-seeking developers, demands from emergent middle classes for modern residential, consumption and recreational spaces, and, last but not least, the availability of finance, these land transformations seek to commodify and enclose residential urban commons and involve the displacement of thousands of urban residents. Through an examination of two field sites, a 'legal' kampung where land is being acquired through negotiations between kampung residents with land rights and developers' land brokers, and two 'illegal' kampungs whose residents were evicted in the name of flood mitigation, we conclude that the default theory for explaining these processes-accumulation by dispossession-is inadequate for capturing the variegated and complex nature of such processes. By thinking through Jakarta, we seek to provincialize the dominant concept of accumulation by dispossession, proposing an extension that we suggest is better attuned to capture the distinct features of Southern cities: Contested accumulations through displacement. A dramatic urban land transformation is underway across Asian cities and many other cities of the post-colony. In the context of the variegated neoliberalization of global urbanism, conjoined with political elites' intents that their city achieve world class status, an emergent middle class aspiring to western urban lifestyles, and the attractiveness of real estate as an investment opportunity, developers have been converting informally settled spaces of an urban commons into privatized, commodifiable land assets. This is a struggle over space that plays out locally, while influenced by supra-, inter-and national scale developments. These processes are not only variegated but also contested: Those engaged in these struggles
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2018
Urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberal urban governance are assuming new forms under finance-dom... more Urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberal urban governance are assuming new forms under finance-dominated accumulation. We examine and contribute to theorizing the mechanisms through which urban governance is financialized, taking as a case study JESSICA, one of the European Union's initiatives to implement an 'urban sensitive' policy for sustainable and integrated development. Like other initiatives promoting financialization, JESSICA deploys the logic of finance to select and fund urban social initiatives and development projects on the basis of their potential return on investment (ROI). Understanding this process requires placing questions of political economy––how urban governance is shaped by the broader political-economic context––with questions of governmentality––how stakeholders are enrolled in and come to take for granted new governance initiatives. Following the multi-scalar institutional infrastructure is crucial to understanding how this works. Taking a relational multi-scalar approach, we trace how changes at the supranational scale filter down to shape urban policy selection and performance in Sofia, Bulgaria, where we document how ROI calculations conflict with social welfare priorities. Contrasts between the trajectory of financialization of urban governance in the European Union and the United States demonstrate how this is geographically variegated, shaped by the broader context/conjuncture within which such financialization is embedded.
Across cities of the global South, major initiatives are underway to assemble land from informal ... more Across cities of the global South, major initiatives are underway to assemble land from informal settlements in order to make it available for large-scale infrastructure and commercial real estate projects. Driven by global city aspirations, profit-seeking developers, demands from emergent middle classes for modern residential, consumption and recreational spaces, and, last but not least, the availability of finance, these land transformations seek to commodify and enclose residential urban commons and involve the displacement of thousands of urban residents. Through an examination of two field sites, a 'legal' kampung where land is being acquired through negotiations between kampung residents with land rights and developers' land brokers, and two 'illegal' kampungs whose residents were evicted in the name of flood mitigation, we conclude that the default theory for explaining these processes—accumulation by dispossession—is inadequate for capturing the variegated and complex nature of such processes. By thinking through Jakarta, we seek to provincialize the dominant concept of accumulation by dispossession, proposing an extension that we suggest is better attuned to capture the distinct features of Southern cities: Contested accumulations through displacement. A dramatic urban land transformation is underway across Asian cities and many other cities of the post-colony. In the context of the variegated neoliberalization of global urbanism, conjoined with political elites' intents that their city achieve world class status, an emergent middle class aspiring to western urban lifestyles, and the attractiveness of real estate as an investment opportunity, developers have been converting informally settled spaces of an urban commons into privatized, commodifiable land assets. This is a struggle over space that plays out locally, while influenced by supra-, inter-and national scale developments. These processes are not only variegated but also contested: Those engaged in these struggles
This special issue, papers presented at an Urban Studies Foundation-funded conference in Jakarta ... more This special issue, papers presented at an Urban Studies Foundation-funded conference in Jakarta (March 2011), examines the current 'urban century' in terms of three revolutions. Revolutions from above index the logics and norms of mainstream global urbanism, particularly the form they have taken as policymakers work with municipal officials worldwide to organise urban development around neoliberal norms. Revolutions from below refer to the multifaceted contestations of global urbanism that take place in and around cities, ranging from urban street demonstrations and occupations (such as those riveting the world in early 2011 when these papers were written) to the quotidian actions of those pursuing politics and livelihoods that subvert the norms of mainstream global urbanism. It also highlights conceptual revolutions, referencing the ongoing challenge of reconceptualising urban theory from the South -not simply as a hemispheric location or geopolitical category but an epistemological stance, staged from many different locations but Downloaded from always fraught with the differentials of power and the weight of historical geographies. Drawing on the insights of scholars writing from, and not just about, such locations, a further iteration in this 'southern' turn of urban theorising is proposed. This spatio-temporal conjunctural approach emphasises how the specificity of cities -their existence as entities that are at once singular and universal -emerges from spatio-temporal dynamics, connectivities and horizontal and vertical relations. Practically, such scholarship entails taking the field seriously through collaborative work that is multi-sited, engages people along the spectrum of academics and activists, and is presented before and scrutinised by multiple publics.
Recent urban scholarship celebrates the increased cultural and ethnic diversity of contemporary c... more Recent urban scholarship celebrates the increased cultural and ethnic diversity of contemporary cities as promoting conviviality and intercultural sensibilities. The contact hypothesis, and immigrant integration policies drawing on it similarly stress the importance of increased face-to- face contact for reducing inter-group prejudice and conflict. Drawing on ethnographic research in eastern Berlin, this paper examines spaces of encounters between local residents and recent immigrants and their potential for decreasing negative stereotypes, prejudice and conflict. We find that contact between Russian Aussiedler and local German residents in public and quasi- public spaces remains fleeting, often reinforcing pre-existing stereotypes. Local immigrant integration projects, despite their intentions of increasing contact between migrant and non- migrant residents, often fail to provide opportunities for deeper contact. On the other hand, sustained and close encounters are enabled in spaces of neighborhood community centers, where immigrants and native residents work side-by-side on common projects. These sustained encounters engender more empathy and positive attitudes towards individual immigrants but these are not scaled up to the group, contradicting claims of recent contact theorists. We
suggest that scholars and integration practitioners be cautious of overoptimistic assumptions about how encounters across difference can contribute to decreasing resentment and interethnic conflict, as these are underwritten by much broader processes of marginalization and deeply entrenched unequal power relations.
This article examines the political and spatial registers of struggles against exclusion- ary loc... more This article examines the political and spatial registers of struggles against exclusion- ary local immigration policies and for more welcoming policies in the Washington DC metropolitan area, one of the hotspots for both local anti-immigration policies and immigrant advocacy in the United States. We conceptualize immigrant advocacy not simply as an alliance, but instead as an assemblage that brings together a diverse set of differently positioned actors and nonhuman actants. The assemblage enacts a diverse politics that deploys different forms of activism, while engaging different publics (e.g., religious communities, unions, the larger public sphere in public spaces, etc.) and the state in complex ways. From acting outside the state to engaging in claims-making towards the state, immigrant advocates are making claims and actions that challenge and go beyond dominant conceptions of citizenship rights and liberal democratic politics. The spatial register is similarly diverse. The immigrant advocacy assemblage is confronted with and enacts a different politics of place in central cities and inner- and outer-ring suburbs. Contestations of exclusionary local policies, however, are not simply about a local politics of place. To the contrary, some actors and actants in the assemblage are actively involved in extra-local networking, collaborating across jur- isdictional boundaries—between central cities and inner-and outer-ring suburbs within the Washington DC metropolitan area and across the United States. The complexities of these contestations call into question post-political narratives of “proper” politics, underscoring the need for an empirically grounded critical theory of democracy. This article contributes to this task by providing a geographically and historically sensitive analysis of the immigrant advocacy assemblage.
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Papers by Helga Leitner
agenda, is being rolled out from the top down by a network of
public, private, non-profit sector actors forming a global urban
resilience complex: producing norms that circulate globally, creating
assessment tools rendering urban resilience technical and
managerial, and commodifying urban resilience such that private
sector involvement becomes integral to urban development planning
and governance. The Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilience
Cities Program is at the center of this complex, working with the
World Bank, global consultants, NGOs, and private sector service
providers to enroll cities, develop and circulate urban resilience
assessment tools, and create a market catalyzed by the notion of a
resilience dividend. Notwithstanding the claim of this program
being open and inclusive, aspects of its initial operationalization
in Jakarta suggest that urban resilience assessment tools preempt
alternative understandings of urban resilience and marginalizing
voices of the city's most vulnerable populations.
transformations are shaped both by Jakarta’s shifting conjunctural positionality within global political economic processes and by Indonesia’s hybrid political economy. While influenced by neoliberalisation, Indonesia’s political economy is a hybrid formation, in which neoliberalisation coevolves with long-standing, resilient oligarchic power structures and contestations by the urban majority. Three persistent features shape these transformations: the predominance of large Indonesian conglomerates’ development arms and stand-alone developers; the shaping role of elite informal networks connecting the development industry with state actors; and steadily increasing foreign
involvement and investment in the development industry, accelerating recently. We identify three eras characterised by distinct types of urban transformation. Under autocratic neoliberalising urbanism (1988–1997) peri-urban shopping centre development predominated, with large
Indonesian developers taking advantage of close links with the Suharto family. The increased indebtedness of these firms became debilitating after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Thus post-Suharto democratic neoliberalising urbanism (1998–2005) was a period of minimal investment, except for shopping centres in DKI Jakarta facilitating a consumption-led strategy of recovery from 1997, and the active restructuring of elite informality. Rescaled neoliberalising urbanism
(2006–present) saw the recovery of major developers, renewed access to finance, including foreign capital, and the construction of ever-more spectacular integrated superblock developments
in DKI Jakarta and peri-urban new towns.
suggest that scholars and integration practitioners be cautious of overoptimistic assumptions about how encounters across difference can contribute to decreasing resentment and interethnic conflict, as these are underwritten by much broader processes of marginalization and deeply entrenched unequal power relations.
agenda, is being rolled out from the top down by a network of
public, private, non-profit sector actors forming a global urban
resilience complex: producing norms that circulate globally, creating
assessment tools rendering urban resilience technical and
managerial, and commodifying urban resilience such that private
sector involvement becomes integral to urban development planning
and governance. The Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilience
Cities Program is at the center of this complex, working with the
World Bank, global consultants, NGOs, and private sector service
providers to enroll cities, develop and circulate urban resilience
assessment tools, and create a market catalyzed by the notion of a
resilience dividend. Notwithstanding the claim of this program
being open and inclusive, aspects of its initial operationalization
in Jakarta suggest that urban resilience assessment tools preempt
alternative understandings of urban resilience and marginalizing
voices of the city's most vulnerable populations.
transformations are shaped both by Jakarta’s shifting conjunctural positionality within global political economic processes and by Indonesia’s hybrid political economy. While influenced by neoliberalisation, Indonesia’s political economy is a hybrid formation, in which neoliberalisation coevolves with long-standing, resilient oligarchic power structures and contestations by the urban majority. Three persistent features shape these transformations: the predominance of large Indonesian conglomerates’ development arms and stand-alone developers; the shaping role of elite informal networks connecting the development industry with state actors; and steadily increasing foreign
involvement and investment in the development industry, accelerating recently. We identify three eras characterised by distinct types of urban transformation. Under autocratic neoliberalising urbanism (1988–1997) peri-urban shopping centre development predominated, with large
Indonesian developers taking advantage of close links with the Suharto family. The increased indebtedness of these firms became debilitating after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Thus post-Suharto democratic neoliberalising urbanism (1998–2005) was a period of minimal investment, except for shopping centres in DKI Jakarta facilitating a consumption-led strategy of recovery from 1997, and the active restructuring of elite informality. Rescaled neoliberalising urbanism
(2006–present) saw the recovery of major developers, renewed access to finance, including foreign capital, and the construction of ever-more spectacular integrated superblock developments
in DKI Jakarta and peri-urban new towns.
suggest that scholars and integration practitioners be cautious of overoptimistic assumptions about how encounters across difference can contribute to decreasing resentment and interethnic conflict, as these are underwritten by much broader processes of marginalization and deeply entrenched unequal power relations.