Creating city growth narratives from different disciplinary perspectives: An application to land use and transport development in an Indonesian City

Cities are entities that involve a variety of elements, both physical and nonphysical, and can be understood from different disciplinary perspectives. However, nearly all past analyses of cities, particularly with respect to transport, have been conducted in accordance with specific disciplinary perspectives, thus neglecting factors that are not covered by the discipline concerned.
This thesis develops a methodology to create narratives, both past and future, of city growth from different disciplinary perspectives concerning land use and transport development. It conducts a multidisciplinary study in expecting to understand the growth of the city from multiple perspectives. Moreover, it shall be useful in creating city growth policies as the methodology tries to think differently in defining the future of the city. The methodology is developed by creating a classification framework, based upon nine criteria that can be used to understand different views within the disciplines of transport studies, economics, geography, economic geography, urban planning, history, and sociology. The resulting classification table is then populated by examples of papers about city growth from these disciplines. Furthermore, in accordance with the logical thinking of the disciplines, causal loop diagrams are developed which are used to identify the causal relationships between events, thus helping to create narratives of city growth.
The thesis uses the methodological insights gained from this classification in a case study of the Indonesian city of Purwokerto, which is classed as a ‘second city’ in Indonesia’s hierarchy and which receives less academic attention than the main cities of the country. Using historical data from various sources, past narratives of Purwokerto’s growth are created following logical thinking from four disciplines: transport studies, economics, geography, and sociology. A similar procedure is then used to create narratives of the future, though based around the trajectories foreseen and planned in official development plans instead of historical.