Revisiting the Green City Concept in the Tropical and Global South Cities Context: The Case of Indonesia

Abstract

Urban areas play a key role in reaching global sustainability as they produce a high amount of waste and emissions, consume a lot of resources, and perform as the prime mover of the global economy. Unsustainable urbanization will generate multidimensional impacts on the earth’s socio-ecological system that is nearly impossible to be managed. As a preemptive action, urban sustainability has been considered as one of the most important targets in the Sustainable Development Goals. Within this context, the green city has emerged as a widely adopted concept around the globe. In the Global North, the concept of a green city has been incrementally developed as efforts to mainstream green infrastructure and nature-based solutions approaches in supporting ecosystem services. Quite the contrary, in the Global South cities, due to their rapid and vast urbanization process, the green city has been fragmentally adopted. Previous studies have proposed three factors, i.e., urbanization, biophysics, and governance, underlying the different approaches of green city development between cities in the Global North and South. Still, more studies are needed to explicate these factors and how these will in turn shape a particular green city trajectory in Global South cities. This study aims to respond to these questions based on green city experimentation in Indonesia. An exploratory study was done based on a literature review and participant observation. The results exhibit that the green city program in Indonesia largely focused on the development of green open spaces which has ultimately failed to improve the urban environment and sustainability. Incorporating local socio-ecological aspects coupled with integrated multi-level and multi-actors’ governance is recommended to increase the green city performances.

Governing green open space in indonesia: barriers and opportunities to enhancing enviromental quality

“…Therefore, green open spaces should be site-specific and include native plant species, which have adapted to the local environment. Plant health is essential to environmental health, hence green areas should be well maintained (Zain et al, 2022). Next, involve communities in decision-making.…”

“…This step could be done by doing collaboration. Since, lack of intersectoral collaboration and institutional fragmentation has consequently diminished the definition of a green city in Indonesia (Zain et al, 2022).…”

Achieving effective climate action in cities by understanding behavioral systems

“…For example, the Trans Java Expressway development in Indonesia aimed to spur interregional connectivity and economic growth in a ''green way'' but has increased the vulnerability of cities located along the coastline to flooding and land subsidence. 7 Considering that 100 unintended consequences were identified for UK housing energy-efficiency policies alone, 8 it is vitally important that local policymakers be enabled to assess climate solutions more systemically.…”

Smart City development in “Nusantara”, the new capital of Indonesia: local government and community readiness

“…The element of smart environment must also be a top priority to prevent environmental damage that could occur during the construction of the new capital city. By establishing data disclosure, smart environments can support efforts to implement green cities by focusing on local socio-ecological conditions and community engagement in addition to providing green open spaces (Amalia et al, 2020;Rusadi et al, 2016;Zain et al, 2022). Previous research has demonstrated that implementing the concept of a smart city can increase urban eco-efficiency by 16%-18% (Yao et al, 2020).…”