The inauguration of the Suramadu Bridge by the Indonesian President in June 2009 was a great event. The bridge links the town of Surabaya, Indonesia’s secondlargest city, capital of the province of East Java and an industrial and port city with a population of 2.5 million, to the island of Madura, which is densely populated and impoverished. The modern design of the 5.4 km long cable-stayed bridge, the road infrastructure created to provide the bridge access and the possibilities for urban development opened up in Madura are all advantages for the city of Surabaya as it competes to attract national and international investors as a secondary city.
Suramadu Bridge
Difficulties in financing the 450 million USD project from the point of view of the bridge’s profitability held it back for twenty years. Development projects in Madura, which were a gauge for the potential increase in traffic, met with strong opposition in Madura itself. The project was finally carried out thanks to a subsidised loan and technical assistance from China.
An agency (the BPWS) was set up in July 2009 in order to develop the zone around the bridge, under the direct responsibility of the Indonesian President – perhaps a reminder of the New Order’s top-downplanning techniques. Seven new infrastructure projects are planned, including a new port for container ships in Madura, as Surabaya’s port is congested. Industrial investment and property development projects are already underway in Madura. Without a doubt, the largest such project is that of a Surabaya property developer for a “Madura industrial seaport city” spanning more than 10,000 hectares and including port terminals, an industrial and commercial zone and office blocks.
The building of the bridge raises various issues. The significant increase in Chinese cooperation in the field of large-scale urban infrastructures, replacing Japanese cooperation, is remarkable. Raising questions as to the competency of the various levels of Indonesian territorial authority within the context of decentralisation is also a sensitive issue. This editorial will focus on two of the city of Surabaya’s objectives following the construction of the bridge: reinforcing the city’s infrastructures, mainly its ports, in order to strengthen its international position, and developing the Surabaya urban area.
Strengthening Surabaya’s international position.
As a city for business, industry and services, Surabaya’s unique pattern of development relates to its dual function. It is a port for its island state, linking various maritime networks of different sizes and destinations, as well as being an important regional economic and administrative capital. Its function as a port is inherent, as it was the port for the Majapahit kingdom from as early as the 13th century and was one of the centres which structured the regional trade networks that transported products from the eastern islands, Celebes and southern Borneo to the main north-south international trade route, which ran from the Strait of Malacca to the west and followed the Asia-Pacific coastlines to the east. On a smaller scale, the city enabled local trade with the Maduran coasts and with the Javanese interior as it is situated at the mouth of the Brantas, one of the great Javanese rivers which used to be navigable.
South-East Asian maritime routes in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries
The city’s emblem, a shark and a crocodile, demonstrates its function as a crossroads between land and sea. © S. Midori - Wikicommons
These functions were confirmed during the colonial era, as Surabaya was a small, secondary garrison post during the last 30 years of the 18th century and then a naval base and defensive fort in the 1830s, becoming the main port and economic capital of one of the richest plantation regions at the end of the 19th century. With 150,000 inhabitants, Surabaya was the main city of the Dutch East Indies in 1905, ahead of the capital Batavia (now known as Jakarta). At the beginning of the 20th century, the Dutch East Indies’s spatial structure was actually a polycentric pattern. However, independence and then the era of the New Order (1966-1998) were marked by strong progression in the centralisation of management of the archipelago, which lead to the country being governed from Jakarta. As the only international gateway to Indonesia until 1986, Jakarta thus monopolised international flows. The urban system with strict hierarchies which resulted from centralisation, based on towns’ administrative functions and on the financial means allocated by the state, has certainly placed Surabaya in a secondary position. But its business and seaport traditions have enabled Surabaya to join Jakarta in providing maritime and aerial access to the vast archipelago which extends over 5,000 km from east to west. Surabaya sends rice and manufactured products to the centre and east of Indonesia, and receives mineral, forestry and agricultural products in exchange.
Destination of rice transported from Jakarta and Surabaya in 2000
East Java’s growing participation in globalisation since the 1980s has lead to an expansion in urbanisation and industrialisation around Surabaya, and the process of decentralisation initiated since the fall of the New Order has given Surabaya the means to free itself from the guardianship of Jakarta and forge greater direct international relations. The vast majority (70%) of its international freight already goes via Singapore and no longer via Jakarta, even though East Java’s international exports are growing strongly. Surabaya is also trying to make the most of its position at the meeting point of two international trade networks: the network of flows between Australia and Singapore (two dominant regional centres for international exchanges, which are a long way from Surabaya but are developing their relationships with the city), and the network of links between Australia and the South China Sea, which generates flows that are likely to use the East Asian north-south route via the Lombok and Makassar Straits, which is a secondary route to the Malacca Strait and the East Asian coastlines. Surabaya’s strategy is similar to that of Darwin, the capital of the Australian Northern Territory, in this respect, as Darwin hopes to position itself as the international gateway to northern Australia. In Surabaya’s case this strategy involves a significant improvement in the infrastructure of its ports. The plans to build a seaport on the island of Madura, alongside other projects linked to the building of the bridge, will contribute to meeting this objective.
“The Australasia Trade route breaking down boundaries”, presentation made in November 2005 by B.O’Gallagher, the Northern Territory government’s director of commerce and investment, and J.Parkes, CEO of the transport company FreightLink. http://tem.msomail.co.uk/assets/OGallagherParkes.pdf, consulted on 23rd December 2009
The reorientation of Surabaya’s development towards the north-east
Kembang Jepun Street, a market street in the Chinese quarter
Old building in the Bongkaran area |
A kampung entrance in the Kenjeran district |
Surabaya’s main direction for expansion is on a north-south axis. In the past, this went from the port and the old town towards the richer plantation zones in the Brantas valley and the north-eastern coast of Java. The city of Surabaya is still characterised by the pattern from colonial times and is made up of the old town to the north (around the old Dutch and Chinese quarters, where the traditional housing quarters, the kampung, are at their most dense) and the north-south extensions linked since colonial times to the development of new residential neighbourhoods and the expansion of business districts towards the south, along the Kali Mas river. The Tunjungan-Embong Malang quarter and Pemuda form a business district which has been growing since the 19th century, but whose high-rise buildings date from the 1990s. It groups together hotels and modern shopping centres as well as towers and office blocks housing the head offices of foreign and internationalised companies keen to project an image of modernity. At the southern edge of the municipality, a new business centre is growing around the motorway hub linking the western ring road, the motorway to the south and the future motorway to the airport. The city’s centres are thus built up along a north-south axis, with rapid growth also occurring alongside this axis. Since the 1990s, new centres, mainly trade centres in the form of shopping malls, have been developing in a more residential outer centre, where change is moving quickly, boosted by demand from expatriates and the well-off for a new type of residential neighbourhood formed of housing estates of several hectares or vast new towns that are integrated into the city, whose architecture and position cut a very different figure from the kampung.
The direction of this expansion takes it over the municipality’s boundaries, and the acceleration of industrialisation since the 1980s has resulted in the setting up of an urban spill-over zone to the south of Surabaya, lead by the relocation of residential areas and industrial activities to the outskirts of the city, along main roads and motorway exits and exchanges. This expansion is spearheaded by the strategies of private players, making the most of opportunities in property or land to develop industrial and residential zones which transform thousands of hectares of irrigated paddy fields to non-agricultural use each year. To avoid the destruction of these paddy fields, which make East Java one of Indonesia’s rice-producing centres, and re-balance the development of the Surabaya urban area from a geographic point of view, the State and provincial public authorities are trying to force the urban development towards the arid soils of the north west of the province and of Madura, especially since there have been continuous eruptions of hot mud following a probable drilling accident at the Lapindo gas exploration site. These have blocked the road leading from Surabaya to the south at Porong since 2006. From the point of view of the Surabaya urban area, this is one of the challenges involved in its potential expansion towards Madura, before taking the economic and social situation in Madura itself into account.
Map of East Java
Selected references:
Dick H.W. (2002), Surabaya, City of work: A socioeconomic history, 1900-2000. Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press.
Franck M. (1999), Le projet Suramadu : une illustration des enjeux nationaux et locaux du développement en Indonésie (the Suramadu project: an illustration of the national and local issues of development in Indonesia), Archipel, n° 58, p.89-106.
Frederick W.H. (1988), Visions and Heat: The Making of the Indonesian Revolution, Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press.
Photos and maps: © 2010 - Manuelle Franck, except when indicated otherwise
Graha Famili new town, west of Surabaya |
Pakuwon Mall entrance |
Pakuwon Mall interior |
News main page
30/12/14
