@CelloMomOnCars Nusantara needs to be understood not as a reaction to climate change, but as a combination of two different trends, both negative: the Transmigrasi program sending out Javans to the rest of Indonesia to act as, essentially, settlers amidst the local population; and the general hostility of both nationalists and populists to large cities, which violate their sense of rural-national values. "We must decentralize, the capital city is too big" has been a common trope for generations.
@CelloMomOnCars (A third reason to move the capital in some countries is to insulate an authoritarian government from popular pressure; Naypyidaw and the planned new capital for Egypt are both designed for this. The urban planning in such cities is designed to make it hard to protest and easy for the military to repress protesters. Nusantara has the same urban planning, but I don't know if that's part of its purpose or just convergent evolution in bad urban design.)
@Alon@Colinvparker@CelloMomOnCars Yup. It was planned and completed before the military coup. It was part of a developmentalist plan with broad elite buy in to populate the interior. The military regime kept doing it (Sinop) and the last planned city was built after the transition to democracy (Palmas in 1989).
I found this intriguing, haven't heard of it before: "The urban planning in such cities is designed to make it hard to protest and easy for the military to repress protesters."
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