title: The Impact of the Compact City on Housing Affordability in the Indonesian Metropolis
Creators: name: Dewita, Yulia
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: Housing affordability
subject: Compact urban form
subject: Sustainability
subject: Compact city
subject: Indonesia
subject: Developing countries
subject: Low-income groups
subject: Urban development policy
subject: Housing shortages

description: The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between compact urban form and housing affordability. Sustainability is a key planning and development objective in the urban sector. In spite of the multifaceted relationships between urban form and sustainable development, the compact city is widely accepted as a form suitable for pursuing the goals of sustainability. One perceived undesirable impact of a compact city is its negative effect on housing affordability. Research on the influence of urban compaction on housing affordability has been undertaken for decades, yet empirical evidence has been rarely found in developing countries, including in Indonesia. While adopting a compact city concept in the nation‘s urban development policy and strategies, Indonesia faces problems of housing shortages, particularly for low-income groups. Thus, research on the relationship between compact urban form and housing affordability in Indonesia, including its policy implications, is essential. This thesis involves, i) a qualitative exploration of the compact city in Indonesia in order to understand existing conceptions and their application in urban development policies; ii) a quantitative examination using a case study approach to investigate the relationship between compact urban form and housing affordability in Indonesia. Three metropolitan areas in Indonesia, namely Bandung (BMA), Jakarta (JMA) and Medan (MMA), are used as case studies. The relationship between urban compaction and level of affordability are examined at metropolitan level using the three metropolises, and at neighbourhood level using the Bandung metropolitan area as a case study. Both qualitative and quantitative research designs are adopted in this thesis to provide further insight into the concepts of compact city planning, including its influence on housing affordability and implications for policy. This research has led to five published or submitted peer-review papers that flow from an integrated set of research methods. A qualitative method is used to seek understandings about the adoption of the compact city concept in Indonesia, as presented in Chapter 4. Stakeholders from governments (national, provincial and local level), academics, developers and urban residents were interviewed, and policy documents were collected for analysis. The research found that, at all levels of government, Indonesian policy makers view urban compaction as an important urban planning approach to curb urban sprawl, and to anticipate a combination of urban land depletion and the rapid growth of the urban population. A mix of uses, vertical housing and transit oriented development is perceived as the key feature for this concept, although within the urban population, a cultural impediment to high-rise living still exists. In Indonesia, specific, clear leadership in guiding the application of compact city policy at all levels, as well as the importance of the role of policy advocates, is vital in order to advance urban compaction policy as part of a national urban planning and development agenda. The findings of this research can aid in the development and evaluation of compact city policy in Indonesia, and shed new light on how Western planning movements are adopted in the context of a developing country. The link between urban compaction and housing affordability is examined using a quantitative approach. A transport cost component was incorporated into the measure of housing affordability to address the differences in the geographical locations of houses. A combination of housing and transport affordability at neighbourhood and metropolitan level was measured. The neighbourhood level analysis was conducted with data being gathered via household surveys in nine residential sites in the BMA. The results are presented in Chapters 5 and 6. Metropolitan scale analysis used secondary data from Indonesia‘s Central Statistics Bureau (BPS), the 2014 National Social-economic Survey (SUSENAS), for 22 municipalities in the JMA, the BMA, and the MMA (Chapters 7 and 8). The results show that transport costs influenced overall housing affordability, and in some cases, households are making a trade-off between their housing and transport costs. In terms of urban compactness, it is shown that collecting adequate, comparable data for the three metropolises across a total of 22 municipalities is challenging. Statistical information from various sources was collected to examine the urban compactness in terms of density, mix of uses, and intensity in the JMA, the BMA, and the MMA. Descriptive analysis was applied to explain the compactness of these metropolises. Regression analysis was then employed to examine the association between urban compaction and combined housing and affordability. The results in Chapter 8 show that, generally, compact urban form has the potential to promote housing and transport affordability by supporting higher density housing development and better accessibility to main daily travel destinations, such as jobs and schools. This thesis contributes to the growing literature on compact city and housing and transport affordability. The research also has implications for policy in the urban, housing and transport sectors in Indonesia, in terms of type of housing that may overcome combined transport and housing affordability, which is useful for a range of stakeholders, including urban planners, policy makers, and social science researchers across different disciplines.