Biography
Hendrawan Wijoyo is a young theologian from Gereja Pemberita Injil, Indonesia. After graduating from Southeast Asia Bible Seminary with a Bachelor of Theology, he served for seven years as a youth pastor in Indonesia. He is passionate about constructing and applying collaborative theology for the church. His ministry is filled with reconciliation works both on societal and personal levels. He is currently doing his Master of Theological Studies at Duke Divinity School, specializing in Christian ethics.
Paper Abstract
Two years ago, Joko Widodo, the Indonesian president, announced the IKN (Ibu Kota Negara) project. The project will migrate the Indonesian capital city from Jakarta, a 10 million people metropolis, to IKN, a new city built from the ground up in the Kalimantan jungle. This gigantic project will be a hopeful respite to Jakarta, drowning and mired by ecological crises. On the other hand, constructing the new capital city in the middle of the East Kalimantan jungle will result in ecological and habitat loss. The proposed urban planning is also marred by a lack of placemaking and a real sustainable vision. While the government adorns the plan with greenwashing jargon, news from the ground tells a different story. This paper will argue for a Christian placemaking urban vision that can contribute to the IKN project. I will integrate the new urbanism sustainable vision of a city and the eschatological vision of the garden cites in the Bible. The paper will celebrate the possibilities of ecological improvement for Jakarta and IKN while lamenting for real pitfalls that beset the IKN project. The building blocks of this paper will be the works of Philip Sheldrake, Howard Gillette, Paul Santmire, Philip Bess, and Eric Jacobsen. The first part of the paper will expound on how the biblical vision of cities has been translated by new urbanists into feasible and sustainable places for humans and nature. The second part will address the lack of ecological and placemaking vision that has failed Jakarta's ecology and people. This colonial inheritance from the Dutch, intensified by decades of rapid and uncontrolled growth, now haunts the new capital city. It will also address the recurring pattern happening in the proposed new capital. The third part will be a hopeful proposal for the sustainable future of Jakarta and IKN.