The Plantation Logic of Nusantara
In early 2025, Indonesians learned that Jakarta remained the nation’s capital, at least for the time being. The capital was supposed to shift to Nusantara, the newly built city in East Kalimantan, in anticipation of Jakarta’s overpopulation and environmental risks. Yet civil servants, many of whom were expected to be the first ones to move to the new city in January 2025, received an official note stating that the transfer of their office has been indefinitely postponed. Amid a sweeping budget efficiency campaign initiated by recently elected President Prabowo, Minister of Public Works Dody Hanggodo announced that the construction progress on Nusantara would be halted and its construction budget frozen until further notice. Despite the exorbitant amount of taxpayer money already spent by the government to construct Nusantara in the last few years, the new city will lay dormant for now.
The government’s about-face aside, much has already been changed on the construction site of Nusantara. Since 2017, when then-President Joko Widodo first ordered an assessment study for a new capital, twenty thousands of hectares of green areas have been stripped to make way for buildings and infrastructural works, including roads connecting existing nodes with the new city and pipelines for water management and flood prevention (Figure 1). Much of the project’s Main Governmental Zone (Kawasan Inti Pusat Pemerintahan), the new city’s core and the site for the headquarters of national government’s various branches, has already been near completion. The National Axis (Sumbu Kebangsaan), an imaginary line connecting natural features and governmental structures, has already materialized through a series of parks, streets, and plazas, all well-equipped with modern street furniture and sculptures. At the end of the axis sits the State Palace, its functional structure topped by massive metalwork forming the mythical bird Garuda. The monument’s gigantic, green brass wings remind us that regardless of the new capital’s eventual completion, let alone its potential success, there is no looking back.
Figure 1. Satellite views of Nusantara on April 26, 2022 (left) and February 19, 2024 (right). Courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory.
In a project like this, we are reminded that architecture continues to be instrumental to the materialization of power, particularly at times and in contexts in which power is contested or otherwise fleeting. The question is: Whose power does Nusantara represent? The Nusantara Capital City Authority (Otorita Ibu Kota Nusantara), the governmental agency tasked with managing the future capital, branded the city as “A Global City for All” (Kota Dunia untuk Semua), thereby orienting it toward the public. As stated on its website, in addition to serving as “a symbol of national identity” and “an economic driver for Indonesia’s future,” Nusantara is hoped to be “the world’s most sustainable city” and “the world’s first forest city,” thus responding to the current climate urgency while appealing to the concerns of citizens on all fronts. However, as K. Wayne Yang has cautioned us, sustainability is to the present as modernism and slum clearance was to the past: a narrative of progress that seeks to secure a settler colonial future very much founded on the exploitative spatial, social, and economic logic of plantation. Many aspects of Nusantara, from its legal standing to its architectural design, reiterate the same extractive thinking that drove a century of Dutch colonial governance in Indonesia.
It is only fitting that one of the earliest uses of nusantara in written documents refers to the outlying maritime areas on the fringe of the Java-based Majapahit Empire, which Gajah Mada, its chief minister, vowed to conquer. The term “nusantara” is formed by two Sanskrit words: nusa, which means “island” and antara, which suggests “in between.” While nowadays it has become a metonym for “Indonesia,” its original meaning is closer to “the other islands” as seen from Java or Bali, or “the outside world.”[1] Located outside Java, the future capital Nusantara is built on a similar promise of expansion, its three-division zoning anticipating a future extension that comprises a total of 252,660 hectares of land, about four times the size of Jakarta (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Map of Nusantara’s zoning over the existing border of East Kalimantan. The pink area is the Main Governmental Zone; the green area suggests the Capital City Area; and the orange area denotes the Capital City Development Zone. Attachment I to Law Number 21 of 2023 on State Capital.
The first area, the Main Governmental Zone, which has been the focus of Nusantara’s construction in the last three years, covers 6,671 hectares of land, a common size for a corporate plantation estate in Indonesia. The second part, named the Capital City Area (Kawasan Ibu Kota Negara), contains 56,159 hectares of land dedicated to residential areas, education and research centers, as well as medical facilities. Lastly, the outermost zone, encompassing 196,501 hectares of land, is the Capital City Development Zone (Kawasan Pengembangan Ibu Kota Negara), which will be assigned for a national park, conservation facilities, and metropolitan developments.
The vast territory covered by this three-division zoning is by no means terra nullius. To amass land of such an immense size, the Authority had to plan Nusantara on top of existing plantations (Figure 3). A collective report published by Forest Watch Indonesia, WALHI, JATAM, Trend Asia, and other non-governmental organizations suggests that the planning of the future capital overlapped with 162 land concessions used for palm oil and forest plantations, mining sites, and a coal-fired power station. The report adds that the transfer of land-use rights to the Authority would likely entail different forms of closed-door negotiations and transactions between the state representatives and private corporations.
Figure 3. The front page of the official website of Nusantara. The image shows the site of the future capital dominated by eucalyptus, an invasive plant widely cultivated by pulp and paper companies in East Kalimantan. Public domain.
The land’s future remains as much commodified as its past amid the Authority’s aggressive actions to attract investors to purchase lots in Nusantara. Whereas land regulation in Indonesia enables individuals and companies to secure the Right to Cultivate (Hak Guna Usaha), a type of land title that authorizes its owner to make use of state-owned land for a maximum of 50 to 60 years, Article 16A of the Law of the Republic Indonesia on State Capital endows the Authority with a capacity to give a similar title for 190 years. During a groundbreaking ceremony in Nusantara in 2024, President Widodo, with whom the future capital vision is still most commonly associated, spoke like a skilled salesman promoting his products: “Beware. The price of land is still cheap this year. But next year, we’ll never know. The price of land can multiply twofold, threefold, fivefold, tenfold. So shall I remind you, if you want to invest, better be this year.”
Large-scale land concessions in Indonesia are colonial legal legacies. After the abolishment of the forced cultivation system (cultuurstelsel), the Dutch colonial government enacted the Agrarian Law of 1870 to attract entrepreneurs and investors from all over the world to the Dutch East Indies. Based on the notion of “wasteland,” the law stated that any land not listed in the form of European or Indigenous rights should be considered the property of the colonial state, and the state could lease the land to any party who was interested in making it productive. This monumental change ushered in an era of immense growth driven by private enterprises, which secured as much land as possible to produce export commodities such as tea, coffee, tobacco, rubber, and palm oil, all at the expense of Indigenous people and local villagers who found themselves in a difficult position to defend land ownership through court procedures. Despite Indonesia’s declaration of independence- in 1945, large-scale landholdings endure, haunting rural societies whose customary land may intersect with present and future concessions.
The case of Nusantara is not an exception. In late 2023, eviction began in Penajam, a district to the south of Nusantara, where approximately 253.7 hectares of land owned and stewarded by civilians were taken over by the government to make way for Nusantara’s VVIP airport and toll road. Meanwhile, in March 2024, 200 heads of families who lived in Pemaluan, a village within the Main Governmental Zone, received warning letters from the Authority to dismantle their buildings within seven days as they were in violation of Nusantara’s spatial plan. Although the Authority finally revoked the warning after multiple protests from the locals and media coverage, the incident shows that the full expansion of Nusantara will potentially involve extensive relocation of the local population.
Nusantara should not be read in isolation. What makes the plantation model appealing after all, following Anna Tsing, is its scalability: the ability to make it applicable to greater scales without any significant change in its operational framework.[2] Nusantara is only one among hundreds of projects designated as National Strategic Projects (Proyek Strategis Nasional) in another Widodo-era initiative. Their exceptional status enables public or private bodies to accelerate permit and licensing processes. Projects listed under this status are granted the power to secure land provision in the name of public use. Konsorsium Pembaruan Agraria, a non-governmental organization focusing on agrarian reform, reported that between 2020-2023, there was a significant increase in the number of agrarian conflicts, and projects listed under this status contributed to a total of 115 incidents, affecting 516.409 hectares of land and 85.555 families. The success of the future capital in securing and commoditizing its land will provide an exemplary model, a precedent that can be followed by other projects across the country.
“In a project like this, we are reminded that architecture continues to be instrumental to the materialization of power, particularly at times and in contexts in which power is contested or otherwise fleeting.”
Figure 4. Indonesia's Independence Day Ceremony at the State Palace in Nusantara, August 17, 2024. Courtesy of BPMI Sekretariat Presiden Republik Indonesia, public domain.
Returning to the State Palace with its bird-like form to make sense of what this monumental piece of architecture–and the city it anticipates–is supposed to mean, one can’t help but draw a comparison between the building and a master’s house (Figure 4). On the one hand, with its grandiose facade and interiors designed by a sculptor selected directly by President Widodo, the palace solidifies the idiosyncratic preference of the authoritative figure in charge, just like a plantation owner exudes wealth through fancy pieces of furniture in his verandah and antique objects on the wall. Its streamlined colonnade and its location at the peak of the vicinity scream control over the surrounding natural and built landscape, a reminder of its host’s intent to maintain order. On the other hand, the palace, just like the master’s house, is the node linking whatever is accumulated within or through the territory to a broader network of extractive systems. Its architecture might be ostentatious, but the palace, standing firm on the groundwork of the plantation logic, is what connects the Capital with capital.
Citation
Robin Hartanto Honggare, “The Plantation Logic of Nusantara,” PLATFORM, March 10, 2025.
Notes
[1] The oath taken by Gajah Mada, in which he vowed to refrain from using spices with his food until he conquered “nusantara,” is widely known as sumpah palapa. See Hans-Dieter Evers, “Nusantara: A History of a Concept,” JMBRAS 89 No. 310 (June 2016): 3-14.
[2] See Anna Tsing, “Some Problems with Scale,” in The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 37-43.
