JAKARTA - Singaporean Nanyang Technological University (NTU) academic, Sulfikar Amir said the construction of the National Capital City (IKN) of the Archipelago in East Kalimantan was a challenge. Moreover, Indonesia has never had the experience of building a city from scratch or is still vacant land.
"During Indonesia's independence, we have never had the experience of building a city that is completely from scratch. From vacant land, then build a very complex city which can then develop into a dynamic and sustainable urban system," he said. Sulfikar in a virtual Kosadata discussion entitled Designing IKN to be a Smart Forest City, Thursday, March 3.
Sulfikar said that the construction of IKN as a large-scale and expensive project has a high risk of failure. He then alludes to a book entitled Seeing Like A State by James Scott, an anthropologist and sociologist at Yale University.
He said, in the book, James described a number of large-scale projects that ultimately failed due to various factors. One of them is because the vision of the leaders or political elites, when their wishes are realized, is not in accordance with the reality that exists in society.
"So there is a kind of simplification of the socio-political reality and when the vision is realized, it ends up being contradictory," he said.
This, continued Sulfikar, must be studied carefully and wisely by the government. Moreover, the IKN Nusantara project budget is not playful and has a long term.
"We have to be careful there are many things that we can learn, not only from what we have done but what other countries have done," he stressed.
"We have to be objective to see the problems, without having to try to cover up the problem, because maybe we never wanted to be open to state that the project that was being carried out had not been carried out properly," added Sulfikar.
This academic also assessed that moving the capital city from DKI Jakarta to the archipelago would actually bring big problems.
The deep-rooted problems in Jakarta, he said, did not just end with the relocation of the capital city to a new location. In fact, when the central government is not paying attention because it is busy taking care of a new place, this can get even worse.
Moreover, Sulfikar assesses that the central government is actually less involved in solving problems in the DKI Jakarta Province. "If we look at, for example, the contribution of buildings and all activities of the national government in Jakarta to urban problems in Jakarta is below 10 percent. Contribution to flooding, contribution to congestion and so on," said Sulfikar.
"Because of that, moving the capital city from Jakarta will not immediately solve the problem in Jakarta. Instead, it will leave a big problem because when we know Jakarta is not finished then the capital city is moved and in the end we never solve the problem more maturely," he added.
Lastly, Sulfikar also regrets that the IKN transfer plan is still using intuition or instinct-based ideas, without involving logical thoughts or considerations. According to him, there is no measurable rationality used by the government in an effort to move the capital city.
"The rationale for relocating IKN is still intuitive, it's a shame. So, there is no measurable rationality used by the government to say, 'OK, we're moving the state capital to East Kalimantan for this and that reason'. Then there's empirical evidence, there are theoretical and analytical studies so that everyone agrees," he concluded.
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