Politicising land subsidence in Jakarta: How land subsidence is the outcome of uneven sociospatial and socionatural processes of capitalist urbanization

Abstract

Jakarta is sinking dramatically because of land subsidence, which in turn increases its vulnerability to tidal flooding. The explanation of land subsidence’s causes and the design of solutions is led by geoscientists and engineers, who tend to treat it as largely a technical problem. This paper takes issue with this. It sets out to contribute to politicizing land subsidence by analysing it as part of the sociospatial and socionatural transformations that characterize processes of urbanization. We propose an approach that allows showing how subsidence happens through urbanization’s interconnected moments of horizontal concentration, vertical extension, and differentiation – the weight of the built environment, the expansion of deep groundwater wells, and the remaking of the city (and beyond). By investigating the sociospatial correlation between land subsidence and the development of buildings, and the temporal correlation between land subsidence and the increase of groundwater wells we illustrate how land subsidence is intrinsic to (post-) New Order capitalism (1965–1998 and 1998-now). We also show that it proceeds in uneven ways: those who cause subsidence are not the ones who suffer most from it. Through a serious treatment of soil–water dynamics, our socionatural theorization also helps appreciate how urbanization is always co-shaped by interactions between human and non-human processes.