Urban neighborhoods and environmental management: Case studies from Ambon, eastern Indonesia

This work addresses the subject area of global urbanization and its linked environmental and social consequences, a relatively recent focus within the larger geographic tradition of investigating interrelationships between people and their environments. The research site is a rapidly urbanizing market center on a small tropical island of Indonesia, where conditions evoke particular concerns for not only human survival but also for related issues of coastal management, marine biodiversity and the sustainability of island urbanization. Recent urban growth has brought severe environmental deterioration to the city of Ambon and its surrounds, while local government remains unable to keep up with the infrastructure and service needs of its predominantly low income population. Taking its impetus from political ecology and employing auxiliary concepts on practice from theorist Pierre Bourdieu and from network theory, this work enfolds political-economic and social analyses of urbanization processes within an investigation of local environmental problems and local agency. Focused primarily at the micro-level of the household and neighborhood, the research aims to increase understanding of the phenomena of urban environmental degradation and local self-management of the urban environment within this coastal city.