Speculative Urbanism and Uneven Geographies of Risk and Adaptation in Jakarta

Jakarta is highly vulnerable to both chronic flooding and water shortages. Yet these risks do not appear to have negatively impacted private real estate development, which remains highly profitable and continues to transform the northern coastal region. Drawing on in-depth interviews with consultants and bureaucrats, as well as an analysis of grey literature, this talk demonstrates that private developers have the resources to protect their developments from environmental (and therefore financial) risk.

These actors subsequently promise and market ecological security to prospective buyers. State efforts to secure water supply and flood protection at the city scale, meanwhile, are routinely hampered by political-economic factors. Documenting these processes provides insights into splintered ecological security, a process that I argue is actively created in tandem with acts of financial and environmental speculation, with implications for residents well beyond the walls of these bounded enclaves.