Abstract
Based on the United Nations projection in 2018, the world’s urban population is estimated to reach 68.4% of the total population by 2050. At present, 56.1% of the Indonesian population, or approximately around 151.6 million people, concentrates on Java Island (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2020). Other than Jakarta, the present capital city of Indonesia, there are three provincial capitals which can be classified as metropolitan cities (more than 1 million people), namely Bandung (West Java Province, 2.5 million people), Semarang (Central Java Province, 1.81 million people), and Surabaya (East Java Province, 3.15 million people). Although the World Bank (2012) maintains that high urbanization rate is potential for urban economic growth and sustainable improvement of quality of life in urban communities, including the economy, standard of living, and cities’ income improvements, this is not necessarily the case for Indonesian metropolitan cities. It is well known that the socio-demographic of the city and the spatial development of the urban area are two aspects that are interrelated with one another. On one hand, population data affects the planning of urban infrastructure services, especially those related to basic and social needs. The increasing of urbanization rate could form a challenge in urban basic service planning, including housing, transportation, clean water, and sanitation (The EIU, 2016). On the other hand, the urbanization rate can influence urban restructuring, including changes in the economic sector and the cities’ roles in the region (Collins, 2018). Urbanization will have significant impacts to the growth of urban poor and increase the risk of environmental damage, which results in a decreasing the level of urban living quality. In the case of failure to urbanization control, it will likely result in economic and social dysfunction, and increasing the uncontrolled extraction of resources originating from rural areas. However, differences in socio-demoraphic characteristics may have different influences to the urban structure, urban basic service planning, urban economics, urban poors, environmental damages, and urban living quality. Therefore, it is important to analyze the influencing socio-demographic factors of metropolitan city development in Indonesia. The dynamics of socio-demographic aspect are essential for mapping the pattern and tendencies of population distribution. Although extensive research suggest the association of socio-demographic factors and their relation to urban development, this research attempts to enrich this field by taking a comparative case study of three metropolitan cities in Java, Indonesia: Bandung, Semarang, and Surabaya. The paper follows a case-study design, with in-depth descriptive and time-series analysis. Descriptive analysis will describe the composition and social conditions of the population, while the time-series analysis is helpful to project the population growth trends. A quantitative approach (association and regression) combined with the spatial analysis method will be used to identify trends and patterns of population distribution. The data is drawn from four sources: secondary data collection at the central and regional levels, reports from world institutions and literature review from previous research. In addition, primary data collection will be carried out online through selective interview methods. The last section of this paper will present the research findings, focusing on the key themes: (1) comparison of socio-demographic quality among cities; and (2) socio-demographic factors that affect urban development. The comparison will demonstrate differences or similarities of socio-demographic factors affecting urban development and urban living quality.
