ABSTRACT
Urban design, in its relation to the nation and the city, opens up a range of new experiences within the metropolitan society. This chapter explains how successful urban design accommodates these new experiences, and translates the problematic ideal of the nation into the practice of identity formation. It emphasizes the conflicting aspirations of Indonesian nationalists and the Indonesian Chinese in modernizing the urban center. The postcolonial city appears to be a space of exile, in which nationality arises. In this sense, after decolonization, the postcolonial city performs this sense of exile from which nationality is imagined. The chapter examines the ways in which particular urban spaces have been represented in the period of the New Order Indonesia. It explores the ways in which techniques of representing architecture and urban space, while making visible mutual as conflictual identities and social status, have contributed to a formation of a culture of fear in the urban spaces of Indonesia.
