Capital, Infrastructure and Dispossession: A Socio-Spatial Fix Analysis of IKN Nusantara

The relocation of Indonesia's capital city from Jakarta to Ibu Kota Nusantara (IKN) in East Kalimantan has officially been framed as a response to Jakarta's environmental crisis and a vehicle for national economic decentralization. Drawing on David Harvey's theory of the socio-spatial fix, this paper argues that IKN is better understood as a state-led strategy, operated to resolve crises of capital accumulation through the reorganization of land, infrastructure and territory in Kalimantan. This phenomenon has emerged through the alignment of state authority and capitalist interest rather than through a single, deliberate plan. The paper traces this fix through three interlocking movements: (1) ``Rescuing the fix'' examines how the government's characterization of East Kalimantan as available for development sits in direct tension with the region's own extensive extraction history; (2) ``arranging the infrastructure'' analyzes how dam construction, military relocation, and property development channel surplus capital toward this same narrow set of beneficiaries; and (3) ``the tragedy of the fix'' traces the resulting costs the eviction of indigenous communities from the IKN core zone, and the precarious legal status of their indigenous land claims more broadly under Indonesian law. Different from what it promises, the capital relocation has more likely benefited the politico-business alliance, while imposing cost to the local communities and the ecology.