NUSANTARA: New capital or white elephant?

In 2019, then Indonesian President Widodo announced the relocation of the national capital from Jakarta—a megacity plagued by overpopulation and chronic flooding—to a newly planned city on the island of Borneo.

Jakarta is often described as a textbook urban jungle: a dense, fast-paced and chaotic megacity. The site where its successor, Nusantara, is now being built lies at the edge of one of the world's most precious tropical rainforests. Indonesia's capital is thus making a remarkable journey: from the metaphorical jungle of the megacity to the literal jungle of Borneo.

Nusantara is envisioned to house 1.9 million people by 2045. The first phase of construction—the government district—was completed in 2024. According to official sources, Nusantara will become a smart “forest city”. Seventy-five per cent of its urban area is intended to remain green, with the city designed to mimic and integrate with the surrounding landscape.

But behind this ambitious vision lies a far more contested reality. Critics warn of its potential impact on indigenous communities, the environment and biodiversity. Kalimantan is home to some of the world's oldest rainforests and provides habitat for endangered species including the orangutan and the sun bear.

The future of the city itself remains uncertain. Since President Prabowo Subianto took office in October 2024, government investment has been scaled back and the new capital appears to have become less of a political priority. Some observers now openly question whether construction will continue at all, raising the prospect that Nusantara could ultimately become a white elephant.

Nusantara thus becomes a site where competing visions of the future collide: ambitious economic development and biodiversity conservation, political power and ecological limits, the dream of a utopian “forest city” and the reality of building a capital in—and against—the jungle.