Reversing the Jakarta Model: FIABCI Leader Pitches Indonesia's $30 Billion Capital Nusantara to Global Investors in Almaty

ALMATY, Investortrust.id — Addressing international property financiers and urban planners at the CREW ASIA 2026 forum in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI) Asia-Pacific President Rusmin Lawin presented Indonesia’s multi-billion-dollar future capital, Nusantara (IKN), as an ambitious break from conventional Asian megacity design.

Speaking on the sidelines of the two-day summit at the Swissôtel Almaty, Lawin framed the development as a foundational inversion of Jakarta’s auto-centric sprawl, arguing that Nusantara was engineered from the perspective of human well-being rather than skyscrapers and vehicular traffic.

"Nusantara is human-centered because it measures success not by how tall its buildings are, but by how short the walk to a park, a school, and an opportunity is," Lawin told delegates, highlighting that the planned metropolis in East Kalimantan offers global institutional allocators a live demonstration of sustainable, resilient civic master planning.

Reversing the Megacity Dilemma

For decades, Jakarta’s hyper-dense expansion subjected millions of daily commuters to grueling four-hour travel routines across choked highway corridors. Nusantara reverses that model through a statutory urban framework where four out of its eight core guiding principles focus directly on human lifestyle outcomes.

At the core of this strategy sits the "10-Minute City" mandate. Nusantara’s urban grid is master-planned to ensure that 80% of daily civic requirements—including schools, medical clinics, retail hubs, public parks, and offices—are reachable within a 10-minute trip on foot, by bicycle, or via clean public transport.

Private combustion vehicles are excluded from the central government administrative core, replaced instead by zero-emission electric buses, light rail transit (LRT), dedicated bicycle lanes, and autonomous shuttles. Former Nusantara Capital City Authority Head Bambang Susantono had championed this baseline to establish a city that is intrinsically lovable rather than merely livable.

Universal Access and Social Cohesion

Addressing international questions over demographic inclusion, Lawin underscored that Law No. 3 of 2022 explicitly mandates economic opportunity for all social strata, shielding the capital from mutating into an isolated enclave reserved solely for civil servants and affluent elites.

Urban integration protocols prioritize cultural assimilation and local empowerment across the surrounding Penajam Paser Utara regency, ensuring traditional communities are not displaced or alienated from incoming investments. The capital authority operates targeted vocational education, entrepreneurship incubators, and localized land-titling drives to absorb local residents directly into modern commercial supply chains.

The ecological blueprint takes equal precedence. Central planners have reserved 75% of the capital's 256,142-hectare (632,940-acre) footprint as perpetual green and open water space. Rather than deploying vegetation as decorative landscaping, the city combines a biological corridor that restores former industrial plantations into biodiverse tropical rainforest with a comprehensive sponge-city water architecture.

The hydraulic system prevents seasonal monsoon inundation while naturally suppressing ambient temperatures by 2°C to 3°C compared to concrete-heavy metropolitan areas.

Smart Infrastructure Anchored in Human Equity

Concluding his pitch to Central Asian and global institutional funds, Lawin stressed that Nusantara’s smart-city model treats artificial intelligence, sensor networks, and data grids as tools rather than commercial ends.

The capital's academic blueprint integrates four human dimensions: universal equity in digital access, physical accessibility designed around diverse age groups and disabilities, robust personal data protection, and continuous digital literacy training for its incoming citizenry.

By pairing environmental resilience with pedestrian-first mobility and transparent legal concessions, Lawin asserted that Nusantara provides international investors with a bankable, future-proof asset class that positions Indonesia at the forefront of sustainable urban diplomacy.