Negotiating sacred space in Jakarta’s Central Business District: mosque typo-morphologies, governance, and urban transformation

This study investigates the persistence and transformation of Islamic religious spaces within Jakarta’s Central Business District (CBD) amid neoliberal urbanisation. While central business districts are typically characterised as secular and commercial, Jakarta’s CBD features a dense religious landscape shaped by ongoing negotiation. Drawing on frameworks from post-secular urbanism, the social production of space, and Islamic urbanism, the research conceptualises mosques as socio-spatial institutions that mediate faith, waqf law, capital, and urban governance. The empirical approach integrates spatial mapping of 48 mosques with in-depth analysis of six representative cases. Three mosque typologies are identified: enduring local mosques rooted in waqf and kampung traditions, mosques incorporated into office buildings, and freestanding institutional mosques situated within commercial compounds. These typologies illustrate varied architectural and institutional responses to redevelopment pressures, regulatory contexts, and evolving urban religious practices. Legal instruments, including waqf governance, planning regulations, and property regimes, play a critical role in determining whether religious spaces are stabilised, fragmented, or formalised. The findings demonstrate that Islam in Jakarta’s CBD functions as a form of public religion reconfigured through post-secular governance, thereby contributing to ongoing debates on religion, urbanism, and planning.