Authoritarian urbanism in Pakistan and Indonesia: a conjunctural comparison of two new cities

This paper conducts a conjunctural comparison of two planned new cities in Asia: Ravi City in Pakistan, and Nusantara in Indonesia. Planned urbanization, and infrastructure-led development (ILD) more broadly, has been connected in the literature to a rise in authoritarian urbanism. This paper analyses legal sources to situate the historical-geographical trajectories of Ravi City and Nusantara within the global conjunctural moment of ILD. Our legal lens reveals two features of authoritarian urbanism that connect and differentiate our study sites: (1) the legacies of colonial land laws and (2) the scalar politics of land governance. The paper highlights how authoritarian urbanism is exercised, and challenged, in legal arenas such as courts, parliaments, and constitutions. Our method of conjunctural comparison demonstrates that authoritarian urbanism is both transregional and historically-geographically situated. This paper thus advances geographic understandings of authoritarian urbanism and comparative methodology.