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.

分散治理後印度尼西亞的城市發展：兩個成功的案例?

2011年是印度尼西亞的區域自治法實施的十週年。本文探討超過十年的分散治理對印度尼西亞城市發展的影響。在根據印度尼西亞的國情簡要回顧了其政治和行政權力下放的歷史及理由後，我們考察了針對這一舉措的政策結果的一系列重要觀點。媒體報導和學術分析都壓倒性的認為分權治理在印度尼西亞的實施效果是負面的。為糾正這一觀點，我們試圖找出印度尼西亞大規模分權治理所帶來的積極成果和可能性 。我們特別詳細研究了被各種排名和媒體報道列為分權治理下城市發展成功故事的兩個城市的案例 –梭羅（正式名稱為蘇臘月卡爾塔）和泗水。最後我們審慎地評估了這兩個案例並探討了其廣泛的意義