Indonesia's Urban Infrastructure Development Experience: Critical Lessons of Good Practice

INDONESIA’S INTEGRATED URBAN Infrastructure Development Programme was created in 1985 in an attempt to combine more integrated physical and financial planning and implementation of urban infrastructure, while at the same time decentralizing responsibility for the provision of infrastructure from central government to local government within the parameters of central government planning, programming and budgeting guidelines. This volume, which includes work from a variety of authors who have been involved with the programme, documents the IUIDP, assessing its strengths and weaknesses and looking at its future prospects. The first two chapters are a general discussion of urban infrastructure issues and a description of the evolution and objectives of the IUIDP.

Other chapters include three case studies, of East Java, Kotamdya Tanjung Balai and Yogyakarta, chapters on IUIDP’s finance and training practices and institutions, and chapters which approach the IUIDP from the perspective of local governments and from the perspectives of external support agencies (UNCHS, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and USAID). The penultimate chapter compares the IUIDP with similar programmes in other countries and seeks to draw lessons from this comparison which could improve the effectiveness of the IUIDP; this chapter is accompanied by an annex outlining programmes for public investment in infrastructure in 12 countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa. The final chapter gives a brief projection of the future of the Programme and a prescription for action to be undertaken by the IUIDP if the programme is to continue to succeed in the future, including a greater focus on human resource development, more diversity in the provision of infrastructure (with a growing role for the private and community sectors), continuing financial devolution and a greater concern for environmental sustainability. Although this book criticizes the IUIDP, it nonetheless argues that the programme has evolved a set of successful procedures, and may be taken as an example of good practice in urban services delivery.