Designing Nusantara

“The nation’s capital is not only a symbol of the nation’s identity, but also a representation of the nation’s progress. This is for the realization of equity and economic justice. This is for the vision of Advanced Indonesia. Indonesia that lives forever.”

State Address

August 16, 2019

Nagara Rimba Nusa, the title of the winning design scheme for this capital city - builds on this lineage but offers a radical departure. The city doesn’t just sit on the forest like a blanket. It weaves through it. The landscape becomes the framework, not the backdrop. The design draws from ecological urbanism and landscape principles to propose a capital that aligns with environmental systems, cultural traditions, and technological standards.

Such an ambitious vision invites scrutiny. Crescentia Hakim (2021) questioned whether the relocation of the capital could live up to its transformative promise. She expressed concern that the project, despite its sustainable branding, risks repeating the very patterns it seeks to overcome. Building a new city in one of the most biodiverse regions in the world could lead to ecological degradation rather than restoration. Hakim also challenged the notion of decentralization, warning that without institutional reform, the move might result in symbolic displacement rather than genuine political redistribution. Most urgently, she warned that development on this scale risks marginalizing indigenous communities and erasing traditional land systems.

In contrast, Diana Zerlina and Yasmina Azriani (2023) offer a counterpoint through their thorough elaboration of Nagara Rimba Nusa. Their interpretation positions the scheme as an active response to those very critiques. The forest is not ornamental, but structural. The city is 14 shaped by biophilic principles, spatial equity, and climate resilience. Dayak traditions are not sidelined but integrated as design logic. The proposal follows the ‘ten-minute city’ framework, uses measurable sustainability indicators, and promotes coexistence between urban life and natural systems.

This book comes from a simple desire: to share the thinking behind a city that tries to do things differently. It seeks to offer a clear and systematic account of Nagara Rimba Nusa—from its conceptual beginnings to its design logic and its early implementation. But more than that, it aims to position the capital relocation as a critical moment in Indonesia’s urban history. The book is structured into four chapters. The first addresses the idea of centrality and reflects on the role of capital cities throughout time. The second discusses the master plan competition as a public design mechanism. The third chapter delves into

the scheme in depth, and the fourth chapter opens the space for reflection, tracking early implementation, field adjustments, and future questions.

The goal of this book is to contribute to the discourse of urban design in Indonesia. It presents Nagara Rimba Nusa not as a finished product, but as a working document, a design framework still in motion. It recognizes the complexities, contradictions, and aspirations embedded in the making of a capital city. Through this publication, readers are invited to explore how urban design can serve not only to shape form, but to negotiate meaning, advance equity, and imagine new modes of coexistence.

During the official site visit, participants were driven through forests and plantations, across steep terrain and river crossings. The vastness of the landscape was disorienting, hundreds of thousands of hectares of mixed forest, cleared fields, and production land. It was difficult to imagine a single continuous city stretching across such a scale. The future capital, we realized, would have to function like a living organism, composed of many interrelated parts, adapting to the terrain and ecological systems.

Hence we arrived at the title Nagara Rimba Nusa, a phrase that captured the project’s central idea of harmony between governance, ecology, and geography. It reflected Indonesia’s identity as an archipelagic nation endowed with vast tropical forests and envisioned a capital that faced the water in resonance with the country’s Maritime Axis policy. Although the final site was later moved inland for safety and defense, the name endured as a philosophical statement of coexistence between human life and nature. It carried both identity and intent, suggesting a city within the forests of Kalimantan composed of interconnected clusters that evoke an archipelago.

The name came at the very last moment, less than twelve hours before our submission deadline. We had explored many alternatives, including Sanskrit words like puri, nagarakertagama, and citra, but none felt right—they sounded more like real estate developments than a national vision. Inspiration came unexpectedly while walking through Central Park Mall below our office. Looking at its garden, with clusters of trees and ponds forming a small ecosystem, the name suddenly became clear. Nagara Rimba Nusa— simple, poetic, and deeply Indonesian—encapsulated what we had been seeking, a name that sounded familiar yet profound, carrying both the philosophical and spatial spirit of the design.

Designing Nusantara:

URBAN+, 2019 ↑

Pancasila and the Four Pillars

The ideology of Pancasila is translated in the plan through a series of symbolic civic spaces. The first principle, Belief in One Supreme God, finds its expression in the presence of diverse worship facilities distributed across the city. The second, Just and Civilized Humanity, is embodied in a museum that celebrates Indonesia’s cultural and civilizational achievements. The third, The Unity of Indonesia, takes form in the Monument of Flame, standing as a reminder of shared national spirit. The fourth principle, Democracy Guided by Wisdom in Deliberation and Representation, is manifested through the city’s democratic spatial order, where public space invites participation and openness. The fifth principle, Social Justice for All Indonesian People, is represented by the marketplace, a space of exchange that signifies equality and community among citizens.

The Nagara Rimba Nusa’s vision is planned to be achieved through four pillars. The first pillar embodies national identity, an Indonesia-centric worldview where the values of nationhood are manifested through civic spaces such as Pancasila Lake, the Museum of Struggle, the Bhinneka Tunggal Ika Plaza, the Tri Praja Axis linking the executive, legislative, and judicial buildings, and the grand National Axis that organizes the city.

Designing Nusantara:

Bhinneka Tunggal Ika Plaza:

Social & Educational Place for local residents & visitors.

Initial concept of national axis

Danau Pancasila

Initial concept of Danau Pancasila

URBAN+, 2019

Initial sketch of Danau Pancasila

URBAN+, 2019

Forest First, City Later

The design sought to move beyond the conventional idea of a Garden City. Instead, it imagined a Forest City, a city not placed upon the forest but intertwined with it. The difference is not trivial. A garden is cultivated and controlled; a forest is self regulating, untamed, and complex. This distinction carried an ethical dimension. The project’s outlook drew from Indonesia’s ancestral philosophies that placed human life in balance with nature: Tri Hita Karana in Bali, Hamemayu Hayuning Bawana in Java, Pikukuh Karuhun among the Baduy, Tri Tangtu di Buana in Sunda, and Belom Bahadat among the Dayak. These traditions resonate with contemporary ideas of biophilia and biomimicry, in which urban design learns from ecological intelligence. The team held to a guiding principle: forest first, city later. Restoration must precede construction.

Emergent High density and diversity

Canopy Rain Sensitive Canopy

Understory Multi Layer Connection

Forest Floor Shade & Permeable Ground Floor

Buttress Roots E cient Infrastructure (Roots)

Biophilic driven approaches in creating the forest city URBAN+, 2019

2.1 The Moment of Entry: The Competition

Biomimicry

Learn from the wisdom of the natural ecosystem (BIOMIMICRY) and extract the principles of the Kalimantan Rain Forest to be applied as a system and urban features of the Capital City

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Building to building connectivity

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Early map study exploring potential developable area

Photo courtesy: Billy Gerrardus, 2019

The design scheme of Nagara Rimba Nusa, which now forms the basis for the KIPP master plan, takes a bold and unconventional approach to the idea of a capital city. Sibarani Sofian, principal of URBAN Plus and the leader of the collaborative team, argues that the challenges of our era require equally unprecedented design responses. Nagara Rimba Nusa positions the new capital as a tool for transformation. It is both an architectural proposal and a social experiment intended to elevate the nation’s potential and to inspire a new generation of Indonesian citizens.

The master plan for KIPP was developed over approximately four and a half years, from 2020 to 2024. It encompassed both the Urban Design Development (UDD) plan at a 1:5,000 scale, covering 6,671 hectares, and the Comprehensive Urban Design Guidelines (RPK) at a 1:1,000 scale, covering study areas of 250–600 hectares. A clear planning hierarchy was established early in the process to structure the work across multiple scales of detail, ranging from the Sub-Planning Area (Sub-WP), Precinct (Sub-SubWP), District (Blok), Urban Block (Sub-Blok), down to the Parcel (Persil) as the smallest land unit. Each scale was developed with a high level of design sensitivity, supported by parametric tools and integrated multidisciplinary analyses encompassing urban design, architecture, landscape, geology, infrastructure, transportation planning, socioeconomics, and urban-control strategies. Throughout this dynamic process, iterations of land capacity and targeted population were carried out continuously, while emerging investment opportunities were incorporated as key considerations.

On 17th January 2022, President Joko Widodo pronounced the name of the new capital ‘Nusantara’ to the public for the first time. This announcement provide the legal foundation for the new city to governed and operate. This transition from concept to implementation marks the moment Nusantara became not just a vision but a national project shaped by technical rigor, cultural interpretation, environmental responsibility, and governance alignment. Through this framework, the city advances not as a symbolic gesture but as a carefully negotiated and integrative design process.

[12] Nusantara, Indonesia’s most ambitious national project to date, is legally established through Law No. 3 of 2022 on the National Capital which was updated later through Law 21 of 2023. This law is accompanied by a series of regulations that provide operational clarity and institutional authority. These include Government Regulations, Presidential Regulations, Ministerial Regulations, and directives issued by the Nusantara Capital City Authority. Together, these form the legal foundation for managing governance and spatial planning in the new capital.

Four Presidential Regulations serve as the main legal instruments guiding spatial development:

1. Presidential Regulation No. 62/2022 on the Nusantara Capital City Authority

2. Presidential Regulation No. 63/2022 on the Detailed Master Plan of Nusantara

3. Presidential Regulation No. 64/2022 on the National Strategic Area Spatial Plan for 2022–2042

4. Presidential Regulation No. 65/2022 on Land Management and Acquisition in Nusantara

The Key Performance Indicators

The President’s mandate moves toward defining the vision and targets of the new capital through a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These appear in the appendix of Presidential Decree No. 63/2022 on the Masterplan of the Capital City of Indonesia, which outlines eight principles and twenty-four KPIs. Collectively, they align with global Sustainable Development Goals, covering low-carbon development, circularity and resilience, inclusivity, safety and affordability, connectivity, active mobility, and universal accessibility.

What is striking, however, is the level of detail and the ambition embedded in these metrics. The decree sets tar gets such as achieving net-zero emissions by 2045, allo cating 75 percent of the area as open space, ensuring 100 percent green replacement, achieving 80 percent mode share for public transport and active mobility, providing 10-minute access to transit, key amenities, and open spac es, and reaching 60 percent solid-waste recycling. A sin gle city fulfilling all these goals would be unprecedented. While some cities achieve specific indicators—Singapore, for example, with its 100 percent green replacement and approximately 60 percent public-transport mode share—no existing city accomplishes all KPIs at once.

These ambitions raise several questions for discussion:

• Some KPIs, taken together, generate internal tensions. For instance, a target of 75 percent natural greenery implies a highly dispersed urban fabric, yet the requirement of 10-minute access and seamless connectivity demands a compact, integrated structure.

• What kind of urban form or conceptual model can reconcile these apparent contradictions? This becomes a central design challenge.

• The benefit of KPIs with specific metrics is that sustainability performance can be measured, evaluated, and managed. These quantifiable parameters become the basis for developing design strategies. This aspect will be elaborated in Chapter 4, which discusses how parametric modelling tools support urban design solutions that are not only qualitative but also quantitatively accountable.

“With such ambitious targets, the KPI felt impossible to achieve.”

The three dimensional approach allows this coexistence by organizing space not only horizontally but vertically and sectionally. Housing may sit above shops, behind offices, or beside schools depending on noise levels, access, and exposure. Zoning becomes a temporal and spatial framework, with offices active by day, retail by evening, and public spaces throughout, allowing the city to breathe with its inhabitants.

This layered system reduces dependence on vehicles, shortens travel distances, and strengthens a sense of community. In Nusantara, zoning evolves from a tool of division into an instrument of connection, enabling the capital to function efficiently while remaining humane, integrated, and responsive to place.

The transformation in movement redefines mobility as a public good—a shared infrastructure that supports daily life, accessibility, and civic participation. Indonesian cities typically prioritize private vehicles, resulting in congestion, inequitable access, and fragmented urban form. Nusantara takes a different approach by establishing a mobility hierarchy centered on public transport and active movement. At the highest level, mobility is structured around a transit-first system. A primary public transport spine links major institutions, residential clusters, and civic destinations, ensuring predictable and efficient mobility across the Government Core and surrounding districts. Transit is reinforced by compact development, aligning population density with key stops to support viability and to reduce travel distances.