Why do we need Re-orientation in Planning Education and Investment in Human Resources for Connecting Indonesian Archipelago?

Abstraksi

Investment in education has a central and fundamental role in changing people’s mindsets; how we view the world and the way we do things. Meanwhile, planning education plays its part and has a long-term interest to produce competent human resources who are able to take challenges of regional development, including efforts to reduce gap and increase connectivity of the archipelago, into a series of future actions in a systematic and structured manner. Based on the curriculum survey on the website of 37 planning schools in Indonesia, we argue that so far the discipline of urban and regional planning in Indonesia remains mainland-based centric. This can be understood because the regional development science itself has its roots in the tradition of regional development of the continental countries in North America and Europe. The educational practices of regional development planning in Indonesia need to be re-adapted following our recognition on archipelago-based geographic context. In addition to outlining the arguments and key factors for the re-orientation of planning education in Indonesia, this paper also introduces one of the archipelago-based planning educational models that is adapted from the Indonesian mainstream educational planning context. Human resource investment in such educational model is important to realize Indonesia as an advanced, sovereign and inequality-free archipelago-based nation.