Abstract
Across the world, capital cities are being relocated. Such practices have existed almost as long as capitals themselves. Against the background of the relocation of Indonesia’s seat of government from Jakarta to East Kalimantan, it is clear that such processes will continue to take place in the future. Especially if one considers the reasons for the move: climate change is leading to an increasing inhabitability of the Indonesian capital. Therefore, it is important to understand the processes behind such megaprojects and their impacts on the surroundings in order to build new capitals sustainably. Hence, this paper deals with examples from the past seven decades and examines them from different perspectives, such as the underlying politics and economy, planning approaches, reasons for relocation, as well as cultural and ecological backgrounds. With an analytical methodology based on eight aspects of responsible land management interventions (the 8R-framework), it is possible to assess the degree to which these moves are responsible. Combined with a literature review of past documented evidence, we derived 8R-matrices, inferred recurring issues and constructed a database containing multiple aspects of capital relocations. This database allowed simple SQL-coding, which enabled describing commonalities among the different land interventions for the capital relocations. These results help to connect occurring sets of problems to particular political, economic and planning backgrounds and to identify different frameworks within which most new capitals are situated. These new insights make future capital relocations better manageable and can support the process of capital relocation in Indonesia.
Highlights
Capital cities have a very distinct significance for the country they represent, and for the international community
We developed a method, combining the 8R-evaluation of responsible land interventions together with a database analysis of observed issues for consecutive comparison, to be able to find consistencies and analogies within the vast field of capital relocations
We posit that capital relocations are by no means a rarity
Summary
Capital cities have a very distinct significance for the country they represent, and for the international community. This research assembled documented evidence of cases of capital relocations of the past seven decades (presented in Table 1), with the aim to understand contexts in which capital cities can play significant roles and to find consistencies and similarities in the different examples. This understanding is of extra importance, as currently, two countries are in the process of relocating their cities. Resulting findings can indicate pathways such massive resettlements typically follow and further indicate dangers and possibilities This method is relevant for the assessment of massive land interventions and megaprojects in general
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