Urban Design as Figural Practice: The Nusantara Case

Cities are not merely collections of buildings and roads; they are living systems where the physical layout of a place is constantly shaped by the people who live there, the ecosystems that surround them, and the stories they tell. For decades, the field of urban design has struggled with a fundamental split. On one side, there is the impulse to view a city from above, like a mapmaker drawing a perfect plan for the future. On the other side, there is the need to engage with the messy, complex reality of communities and nature from within, where plans often collide with the actual lives of people. This tension is not a flaw to be fixed, but a necessary balance. When a city is being built, the challenge is to keep the big picture connected to the ground-level consequences before the future becomes a fixed image that cannot be changed. This question becomes especially urgent in the Global South, where rapid urbanization often outpaces the ability of traditional planning to include local voices and protect the environment.

In a new article, Stephen Cairns, a researcher at Monash University in Indonesia, examines how this tension plays out in the creation of Nusantara, Indonesia's new capital city in East Kalimantan. The project is ambitious: a "forest city" intended to relieve pressure on Jakarta and serve as a model for sustainable development that other nations could copy. However, critics have argued that the process of building Nusantara has been closed off, moving too fast and excluding the Indigenous communities and ecologies that already exist there. Cairns does not simply agree with these critics; instead, he asks what urban design could become if it took their observations seriously and used them to build a different kind of city. He proposes a method called "figural practice," which treats the city not as a finished product to be declared, but as an ongoing story that is still being written.

The core of Cairns' argument is that the way we represent a city—through maps, digital models, and official plans—often cuts the city apart. A river might be drawn as a blue line for flood control, a forest as a green zone for tourism, and a burial ground as a blank space to be cleared. In doing so, the plan makes the city legible and easy to manage, but it loses the deeper connections that make those places meaningful. A river is not just water; it is a place for fishing, bathing, and remembering ancestors. A forest is not just scenery; it is a habitat and a source of life. When a design process focuses only on the clean, high-level image, it excludes the very things that sustain the city. Cairns suggests that instead of trying to force all these different realities into a single, perfect picture, designers should create a "figural medium." This is a space where the different lives of a place can be held together, compared, and argued over while the city is still being made.

To test this idea, Cairns looks closely at the Sepaku River, which flows through the heart of the new capital. In the official plans for Nusantara, the river is treated as a piece of infrastructure: a source of water, a channel for flood management, and a scenic backdrop for the new city. It is a functional object, a line on a map that serves the needs of the state. However, for the local Balik community, the same river is a lifeworld. It is a place where they fish, wash, and bury their dead. It holds memories and connects them to their ancestors. When the river is turned into a dam or a normalized channel, it is not just a technical adjustment; it is a severing of a relationship. The critical literature on Nusantara has already documented this loss, showing how the project's speed and secrecy have pushed these local realities out of the conversation. Cairns argues that this criticism is not just a complaint; it is a form of design work that has already begun to imagine the city differently. The task for urban designers is to recognize this work and bring it into the official process before the plans harden into concrete.

Cairns outlines three ways to build this "figural medium" so that the city remains open to change and debate. First, there is the "stage." Instead of showing a polished, final image of the future city, designers should create a physical or digital space where different versions of the future can be walked through and tested side by side. This allows people to see how a road might cut through a burial ground or how a flood wall might block access to a river, making the consequences visible before they become permanent. Second, there is the "script." Rather than asking people to give feedback on a finished plan, this approach invites them to act out alternatives. It is like a rehearsal where the community can try out different routes for a road or different ways to manage water, seeing what happens when they change the design. This turns disagreement into a creative process where different possibilities are played out rather than dismissed. Finally, there is "support." This is the mechanism that ensures the ideas generated in the stage and script actually make it into the final decisions. It involves keeping records of the alternatives that were considered, ensuring that the voices of the community are not just heard but are carried forward into the contracts, standards, and construction schedules that will build the city.

The paper suggests that this approach is not about abandoning the big picture or the need for a coordinated plan. A city of this scale still requires a master plan, data, and infrastructure. The difference is in how that plan is held. A figural practice keeps the plan open to revision, acknowledging that the future is not yet fixed. It recognizes that the city is being made, unmade, and remade all the time. In the case of Nusantara, the gap between the declared image of a green, smart capital and the reality on the ground is still wide. This gap is not a failure; it is an opportunity. It is the space where the city can still be shaped. By treating the river, the forest, and the community as active participants in the design process rather than obstacles to be removed, urban designers can build a city that is more than just a model to be copied. They can build a city that answers to the people and the place it occupies.

The stakes of this work extend far beyond Indonesia. Nusantara is intended to be a demonstration model, a template for how cities in the Global South will be built in the coming decades. If the design process remains closed, declaring a future that excludes the people and ecosystems it claims to serve, that model will travel. It will influence how other cities are planned, funded, and governed. But if the design process can learn to hold the tension between the overview and the local reality, it can offer a different path. It can show that a city can be ambitious and planned, yet still remain open to the voices and lives that make it real. The goal is not to solve every conflict or to guarantee that everyone gets what they want. The goal is to create a process where the city can be argued about, where the future can be contested, and where the design remains answerable to the complex, living world it is trying to shape. In this way, urban design becomes a practice of keeping the future alive, rather than just drawing it on a map.