Unpacking The Act No 1 of 2011: Does Indonesia in the right pathways towards sustainable housing development?

Abstract

The government intervention to fulfil housing demand cannot compensate the concomitant issue of urban sprawl, traffic, patchy infrastructure and physical environmental degradation. The government intervention to cope with challenges and problems are leading to a specific policy which the fact it is often confined to a single focal perspective: one intervention to cope with one specific problem at one moment. This limited vision in intervention tends to underestimate interdependencies and complexity of problems. There are many cases where government interventions have resulted in considerable negative consequences instead of promoting improvement or urban conditions. There is little knowledge on how governance and its policy instruments need to be improved to steer onto desirable pathways. Governments need guidance to improve its capacities to cope with intertwined interdependencies problem as opposed to responsive policy to cope with specific problems or targeted goals at a point in time. To better analyse the capacity of Indonesia governance system related to housing development, we used framework in which the structure of governance system can be portrayed by its policy instrument configuration. Using framework, the study aims to investigate the capacity of Indonesian Housing and Settlement Law, The Act No 1 of 2011 to achieve sustainable condition. The study indicates that that the tone of interaction among actors and their actions in dealing with resources (Rs) has been directed by government concerns through national to municipal or city plan (authority regimes). The capacity of policy instrument in in directing housing development in Indonesia is limited to cope with a specific problem and achieve specific targeted goal instead of manager of interactions among interdependent actions conducted by multiple actors in dealing with multiple resources related to housing and settlement. This is crucial to prevent the occurrence of intertwined problems and steer the development housing and settlement in Indonesia toward sustainable condition.