Does ICT make city compactness higher? Evidences from compact city attributes in Yogyakarta City’s districts.

Abstract

From discourse to implementation compact urban development has grown rapidly in nearly two decades. In the era of information communication technology use and popularity of smart city concept, inevitably compact city has entered a new phase: Compact City Version 2.0. In Indonesia, the smart city concept is also flourishing in some cities, even though they are still in early stages of exploring some appropriate strategies. This study aims to look at the effect of the use of ICT in the Yogyakarta City’s districts, proven in previous research to be categorized as districts with high compactness, especially on the attributes of density of population, concentration of activities and social welfare. This research continuously examines how far the influence of ICT is able to give effects on making urban compactness higher. Three districts in the city of Yogyakarta generally with high to very high-density score of compactness were taken as objects of this research. Furthermore, the compact city attributes and its indicators were explored in more detail associated with the use of additional criteria, the ICT usage. The result informs that ICT was able to improve performance for a better compactness. Some of the attributes that were previously weak, such as local public transport services and range of public services were capable of being upgraded by the use of ICT. Meanwhile, attributes that had good performance previously also became stronger. This suggests that ICT with various applications that are appropriate for the life of the urban residents significantly help the performance of the city to be more compact. Welcome to the Compact City Version 2.0!