Evolutionary Patterns in Indonesian Shopping Centers: The Case of Jakarta

In the second term of 2006 Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, experienced the largest retail growth in the Asian Pacific region. With more than 130 commercials venues in 2010, the growth of Jakartaís shopping centers is not only reflected in numbers but also in their physical size. In part, this evolution of shopping centers reflects the globalization of shopping centers development and major retailers. The location, composition and design of such centers strongly resemble other shopping centers in the Asian Pacific and the United States. At the same time, however, other centers seem more unique to Indonesia. In that sense, it is rather difficult to univocally assign these centers to the categories used in the classification suggested by International Council on Shopping Center Classifications (ICSC). The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the evolution of shopping centers in Jakarta using data from 1960-2010. To that end, the evolution of the shopping center in Jakarta is compared to global milestones in shopping center history identified in the literature on shopping centers. Possible reasons such as the physical impact of the decline in business and influence of the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) will be discussed. By mapping the data, it is found that the growth of shopping centers in Jakarta is scattered and generated some new clusters. In addition to the city-level description of the evolution of shopping centers in Jakarta, a more detailed account will be given of one such cluster. This case study is meant to illustrate that the retail development process is dominantly driven by (semi-)copying behavior. New real estate developers tend to add similar properties that either attract similar businesses serving the same market segment or attract business that serve totally different market segments. Consequently, the properties within the same market segment tend to focus more now on services as opposed to physical appearance and kind of stores.