The entrepreneurial city of Kelapa Gading, Jakarta

This article examines chronologically how Summarecon Company has transformed vast, unproductive lands into a satellite city of Kelapa Gading (300,000 population). The study was based on an exploration of the process through which the township was created and represented as a new city. Soetjipto Nagaria, the founding father of Kelapa Gading City, exerts his leadership as a coherent approach to account properly for the growth, development, and morphology of the city. The company's achievement in generating profitability and sustaining Kelapa Gading's growth rate is based on a paradoxical dualism between economic incentives and continual innovation. The company must adhere to the rigid formulas that govern the city's profitability, but at the same time it needs to generate continual innovation in order to stay at the forefront of the constantly changing 'state of the art' development for an entrepreneurial city.