Understanding the Imaginaries of Modernity in Jakarta: A Social Representation of Urban Development in Private Housing Projects.

Overview & Synopsis

This article analyses how social imaginaries are shaped and produced in Jakarta. It studies the roots and development of social, cultural and spatial patterns developed since the Dutch colonial period. It focuses on social imaginaries and social representations, which are both complex social and mental phenomena, connecting people with the whole dimension of social world. In Jakarta, the spatial segregation pattern created on purpose by the Dutch clearly separated the Westerners from the Natives. It produced a collective memory that influenced the creation process of representations, in particular regarding residential neighborhoods. This mental process synthesizes the history of the Jakarta in its the production of social imaginaries which allows us to analyse the evolution of power relations and patterns in the context of globalisation. This study on the housing project