Social justice and planning policy: the provision of sewerage infrastructure in Jakarta, Indonesia

Abstract

This study analysed how urban planning policy reflects the principles of social justice in relation to decision-making processes and the provision of sewerage infrastructure in Jakarta, Indonesia. It highlights the need to consider the role or capacity of planning in ensuring social justice, particularly in cities in the Global South, where urban planning approaches have been unable to address the complexity of Southern realities. This has resulted in growing problems of poverty and inequality.The social justice approach in planning has an important role to play in facilitating equality, particularly through the inclusion of the poor in decision-making processes and providing opportunities for them to have adequate access to services and infrastructure. Social justice incorporates the fair distribution of benefit and burden and institutional decision-making processes within which ‘benefit’ and ‘burden’ are allocated. This thesis addressed the main research question of How does urban planning policy reflect the principles of social justice in relation to decision-making processes and the provision of sewerage infrastructure in Jakarta, Indonesia? First, using the concept of Need as an indicator of distributional justice, this study assessed the distribution of community sewerage projects (Sanimas IDB/Sanitasi Berbasis Masyarakat Islamic Development Bank or the Islamic Development Bank Community Based Sanitation project) against the normative criteria used by the government. Second, the concepts of Inclusion and Enablement were used as indicators of institutional justice and were applied to investigate how the broader social structure and institutional context (i.e. rules, relations and decision-making processes related to power and procedures) affected the outcome. The provision of Sanimas IDB in Jakarta consists of four stages: preparation; planning; implementation; and operation and maintenance. This study focused on the preparation stage, particularly, on the neglected ‘selection process’. The application of social justice values in the local context of sanitation infrastructure provision provides a robust provides a robust mechanism to analyse the selection process, especially in situations where power relations between actors play a significant role.Using a qualitative methodology, the data collection involved document analysis, interviews, and observations. In addition to the scientific literature and institutional documents and reports, the Indonesian government’s documents related to Sanimas (in general) and Sanimas IDB were analysed also. Three categories of interviewees were established and relevant people were interviewed. The reliability of this study is based on triangulation of the results from these methods to establish validity and credibility. This study analysed regulations, policy documents, project reports, and previous studies to identify the selection criteria that underpinned the location of the sewerage infrastructure sites in Jakarta and included stakeholder interviews to assess the contextual application of the criteria. Furthermore, by utilising critical theory on social justice, this study analysed the context of the making and implementation of planning policy. The application of a social justice lens is relevant in the context of increasing inequality in urban areas (i.e. urbanisation of poverty) and was used in this thesis to assess the effectiveness planning policy related to the provision of sewerage infrastructure in Jakarta.The findings of this study have demonstrated that despite the Indonesian government’s recognition of selected distributive and institutional values of justice within the normative policies, those values are disregarded in the actual application when facing internal and external complexities (overlapping/limited authority, staff incompetence, personal and economic interests - stepping stone and rent-seeking - and elite control/capture). Questions about the sustainability of the Sanimas IDB project, and more importantly the effort to create fairness in the society by active participation of the community will be constrained. This research has contributed to the advancement use of distributive and institutional dimensions of social justice in planning. In an empirical sense, this thesis helps to close the gap that has existed in the application of the values of social justice (i.e. Need, Inclusion and Enablement) in the pre-implementation of community-based development projects.