| Summary/Abstract |
Critical writing on 'new town' developments on the edge of Asian cities emphasizes such negative effects as increased social segregation and exclusion, fragmentation of urban services, upward pressure on peri-urban land prices and loss of productive farmland. While not disputing such critical perspectives, this paper seeks to understand the position of one of Indonesia's pre-eminent developers and new town builders in the overall context of Indonesian development and the ongoing internationalization of real estate development in the region. The developer, known as Ciputra, has long been regarded as a pioneer in the development of Indonesia's real estate industry in general and new town development in particular. This paper examines how Ciputra's work as a developer intersects with the developmentalist goals and efforts of the Indonesian state and how many of these projects, which are commonly understood as exclusive enclaves, may be interpreted as a form of development which may be described as 'market modernism'. Pursuing this analysis, the paper then looks at Ciputra's efforts to internationalize this work and considers where it might fit with notions of national development elsewhere and how it may or may not engage with the transborder expansion of capitalist relations and the increasing commoditization of the Asian city.
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