ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the formation and transformation of Indonesian modernity after decolonization as it is constituted in the urban form and space. It explores the ways in which the urban structures of the city, as a major institutional form of the nation state, shape the national imagination. The chapter traces the transformation of the regime in power through changes in the urban spaces, changes which consequently also require deep mental change on the part of the general population. It argues that the most powerful results of the changes in the contemporary capital city of Jakarta are posited not on an affinity but rather on a difference with the discourses of nation building generated by the previous nationalist regime of Raden Sukarno. "Modernity" is less a chronologically determined stage of social development whereas the transition from tradition to modernity is usually assumed to be linear and unidirectional.
