Monarchy and urban change: The post-independence development of the Pesanggrahan Ambarrukmo,Yogyakarta

Introduction

In 2023 the United Nations recognised the tangible and intangible royal heritage of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, by giving the city World Heritage status. A culturally defined ‘cosmological’ axis running north-south through the centre of the city and incorporating a range of buildings and activities linked to the monarchy was central to the case (Figure 1). This article looks beyond this heritage-defined instantiation of the Yogyakarta monarchy (See Kurniadi, 2025). Instead, our focus is a site in the city’s northeastern quarter known as Ambarrukmo. Originally a royal pesanggrahan or garden retreat, Ambarrukmo has undergone two significant phases of urbanisation, supported by the entrepreneurial, city building agency of the monarchy. The first was the construction of a modernist-style international hotel, the Ambarrukmo Palace Hotel (1966), initiated during President Sukarno’s Guided Democracy period (1959–1965) and during the reign of Hamengku Buwono IX (1912–1988, hereafter, HB IX). The second was a large-scale shopping mall, the Plaza Ambarrukmo, conceived during the last decade of President Soeharto’s New Order (1966–1998) and realised in the early 2000s, during the reign of Hamengku Buwono X (1989–present, hereafter HB X; Figure 2). Today, the site’s small collection of heritage-identified royal buildings are flanked either side by the large hotel and mall complexes.

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Figure 1.

The city of Yogyakarta is positioned between Mt. Merapi and the sea, with its kraton and cosmological axis (in black) and eleven royal pesanggrahan (in red).

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Figure 2.

Aerial view of Yogyakarta looking northwest and showing the Ambarrukmo site in the northeastern part of the city. Between the Hotel Ambarrukmo complex (right), and the Plaza Ambarrukmo (left) lay the diminutive extant royal buildings.

Sites like this, and their seemingly idiosyncratic trajectories of development, are not simply by-lines in the study of urbanisation more generally. They are precisely the kind of development story that delivers a more robustly ‘global’ urban studies (Bunnell et al., 2012; Bunnell and Maringanti, 2010; Robinson, 2016). The international hotel of the 1960s and the mall of the early 2000s, are variants of similar hotels and malls everywhere. And while each development aligns with recognisably global trends of, say, neoliberal consumption-led urbanisation, their specific realisation in and through the institution of the Sultanate offers a check on the drive to account for such transformation through singular explanatory terms (Olds and Yeung, 2004). The Ambarrukmo’s development trajectory serves as a reminder of how ‘recognition of extended histories and alternative genealogies’ allows us to understand urban processes as ‘more-than-neoliberal’ (Bunnell, 2015: 1992; Peck et al., 2013). Relatedly, the Sultan’s direct role in the successive landmark developments at Ambarrukmo challenges dominant, western-centric understandings of city building agency. Hoffman (2019) characterises the key ‘actors’ of city building to be the state, the market and civil society, and charts their changing fortunes as a result of neoliberal urbanism. But in many contexts other kinds of institutions are powerful agents in urban change. Most relevant to this article, are the monarchical family-state regimes of the oil rich states of the Arabian Peninsula and their role in shaping spectacular urban development (Hertog, 2019; Moser et al., 2015; Molotch and Ponzini, 2019; Ponzini, 2019). In the context of Southeast Asia, active monarchies remain key shapers of urban environments (Herzfeld, 2025; Leelapatana, 2023; Navapan, 2014; Purwani, 2017; Ünaldi, 2016). This influence can manifest in many ways: from the royal-cum-theological ratification of urban development to the heritage sanctioned edification of extant royal morphologies; from governance by hybrid family-state institutions through to monarchic-mercantile economic development alliances (Elinoff, 2020).

Methodologically speaking, this article aligns with approaches within urban studies that value building and site-based accounts (Blunt, 2008; McNeill and McNamara, 2012; Silver, 1997). As Ford (2001: 381) argued, wider urban dynamics can be given ‘a beams and bolts reality’ by the ‘singular experience’ of a specific site or building. The article shuttles between sources including the morphology of built form and land use change, to existing scholarly and media reports on events and contextual circumstances. Scholarship that seeks to understand the activities of élites is methodologically challenging. This is especially so in the case of monarchies, where activity can be guarded by privilege and motives shrouded in tradition (Clancy, 2021). As such, our analysis draws strongly on the built ‘material instrumentalisation’ of the economic, political and symbolic power of monarchy (Molotch and Ponzini, 2019: 10). The article begins by offering a historical context to the Yogyakarta Sultanate, including its centripetal model of power, and the co-option of this model by secular politics in the post-independence Republic. It then focusses in on the historical role of Ambarrukmo in the functioning of the Yogyakarta monarchy, including its morphological character and use. The paper then turns to an analysis of the two post-independence development phases at the core of the argument.

Sultanate power and urban form in post-independence Indonesia

The phases of development of Ambarrukmo sit within a wider context of change associated with the post-independence development trajectory of Indonesia. Across this period, political ambition and landmark urban development initiatives have often gone hand-in-hand. The political rivalry between the emergent post-independence government and the residual Yogyakarta Sultanate created opportunities for mutual benefit, setting the scene for the projects that reshaped Ambarrukmo. Miller (2013: 837) has argued that current urban theorization ‘tend[s] to locate the Indonesian experience within a singular (Western-dominated) urban discourse or as a uniquely Asian or Indonesian model’. Like Miller, we seek to avoid such polemical thinking. The hotel and mall development types that we document are variously ‘global’ in form and development logic, but they are embedded in and were realised through political and social logics deeply entangled with both the rhetoric and reality of sultanate power.

The Yogyakarta Sultanate embodies key aspects of how traditional Javanese power is conceptualised and realised. ¹ In this world view, a sultan’s authority comes not from exercising power over land and people, but by accumulating resources and loyalty to themselves. In so doing a successful sultan diminishes the resources available to shore up any rival ruler. This accumulated influence is understood to give a ruler ‘divine radiance’ (téja or light), which emanates outwards from a royal centre like ‘a cone of light cast downward by a reflector lamp’ (Anderson, 1972: 36). This had explicit spatial expression: the Negara (the city linked to the palace kraton) at the centre was surrounded by the Negaragung (the agriculturally based region) and, beyond that, the Mancanegara (the interface with foreign realms; Moertono 1968). Nas (1986: 23, 34), argues that the ‘kraton town’ of Yogyakarta exemplifies such ‘focal urbanism’, going so far as to contrast this ‘cosmological’ convening power to the economic agglomerations typical of Western cities. Today in Yogyakarta, the kraton (palace) buildings are sited at the centre of the city and continue to be used by royals, especially those involved in courtly arts readily incorporated into tourism (Figure 3). These buildings cluster along a north-south cosmological axis which, as it passes through the city, follows the key commercial road of Jalan Malioboro and links two monuments, the Tugu Golong Gilig to the north and Panggung Krapyak to the south (Brongtodiningrat, 1978; Purwani, 2014). It is this centripetal form, and the intangible royal culture it supports, that was recognised by the 2023 UNESCO World Heritage nomination titled ‘The Cosmological Axis of Yogyakarta and its Historical Landmarks’.

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Figure 3.

City of Yogyakarta showing main kraton walled area, alun-alun public spaces and the urban segment of the cosmological axis (black) which runs along north-east of the kraton, and lying along the main east-west road joining Yogyakarta and Solo, is the Ambarrukmo pesanggrahan (red and green dot).

Since its inception, the Yogyakarta Sultanate has been subject to forces of change, from Dutch colonial rule (including the British interregnum), from Japanese wartime occupation (1942–1945), and from the varied political complexions of post-independence government. Sometimes the Sultanate was used by external entities to shore up their imposed authority. Other times, the Sultanate used such entities to its own ends. Through various means, the Sultanate has managed to survive as a viable political and cultural entity (Monfries, 2015). Notably, the struggle for independence and the 1945 declaration of the Indonesian Republic did not result in the demise of the Yogyakarta monarchy. It offered opportunities for the consolidation of Yogyakarta’s regional royal power within the emergent post-independence nation. This happened despite the new Republic’s cultivation of a leadership style that self-consciously replicated and rivalled the ‘highly centripetal’ traditional, political culture of Java (Anderson, 1972: 29).

Instantiating an alternate, secular version of ‘Javanese centralism’ in Jakarta was a priority for the new national leaders in the immediate post-independence period (Kusno, 2000: 52). For example, in 1945, when conditions in Jakarta became unsafe, Sukarno’s government fled to Yogyakarta at the invitation of the Sultan (Carey, 1986). There, President Sukarno used a radio broadcast to reassure the nation that the capital of Indonesia was definitely still to be Jakarta (Kusno, 2000: 62; and see Leclerc, 1993). This conviction was underscored through a range of signature infrastructure projects, dubbed proyek mercusuar. ² The engineer-trained Sukarno took a close personal interest in these projects which he saw as an ‘absolute necessity’ for capturing nationalistic sentiments and expressing international aspirations (Sukarno, quoted in Leclerc, 1993: 47; see also Sopandi, 2017; Sudradjat, 1991; Wiryomartono, 2012). Jakarta’s proyek mercusuar included Sarinah department store, Senayan Sports Stadium, Monumen Nasional, Wisma Nusantara skyscraper, Bank Indonesia, Istiqlal Mosque, Semanggi by-pass, and Hotel Indonesia (Sopandi, 2017; Sudradjat, 1991). Later, under Soeharto’s New Order, this built symbolic centrism was augmented by a concentration of power and wealth based on a highly personalistic leadership style that cultivated patron-client relations for the benefit of a small stratum of wealth-pursuing élites. Winters (2011: 139) tellingly dubbed this a ‘sultanistic oligarchy’, further observing its ‘wholly urban’ nature ‘heavily concentrated in Jakarta’ (Winters, 2011: 135–136, 164).

The emergent, post-independence political leadership of Indonesia actively managed the Yogyakarta Sultanate in relation to its own political ambitions. It did so in seemingly contradictory ways. First, it actively sought to position the Sultanate as a largely cultural form, primarily of value to growing heritage and tourism sectors. At the same time, the post-independence leadership also addressed the Sultan’s rival political power by integrating HB IX into its nation building ambitions. Sukarno personally offered the Yogyakarta Sultan key secular political roles, including that of Minister of Defence (1949, 1952–1953) and Vice-President (1973–1978; Kurniadi, 2009; Monfries, 2007, 2015; Soemardjan, 1962, 1989). HB IX’s incorporation into Central Government ensured his alignment with the ambitions of the new nation. It was an inclusion that also benefited the regional Sultanate.

This is most clearly articulated in the centrally ratified, special status secured by the Yogyakarta region, starting in various forms from 1950. This status was in recognition of the exceptional loyalty demonstrated by the Sultan to Sukarno during the revolutionary period, combined with Yogyakarta’s cultural significance to the nation. Through this special regional status, the Sultan has acquired exceptional powers not enjoyed by other sub-national monarchies within Indonesia or even governors of other provinces. This includes the Sultan’s automatic appointment to the role of Governor. This, in turn, has helped the province deflect various Central Government reforms, including going slow on land reforms (Kurniadi, 2019). In 2012 this status was further consolidated through the passing of the Yogyakarta Specialness Law No. 13/2012, which specified the extent of royal rights over land, entrenched the automatic appointment of the royal line to the position of governor, while reiterating the Sultan’s obligations to preserve cultural features of national importance.

The emergence of Indonesia as a guided democracy did not create an existential threat to the Yogyakarta Sultanate. In contrast, it created new opportunities for both Central Government and the Sultan to extend influence and capture resources. The royal house of Yogyakarta and the secular Government were by no means equal in power, but they needed to, and did, engage in active, mutual co-optation. This ‘electric balance’ of power shuttled between modern and traditional leadership styles, between central and regional jurisdiction, as well as secular and sacred logics of authority (Anderson, 1972: 28–29). The development of Ambarrukmo both reflects and relies upon the opportunities of this unique balance. It is to the history and development of this site that the article now turns.

Ambarrukmo and the persistence of the Yogyakarta Sultanate

The Ambarrukmo pesanggrahan is one of 11 such royal retreats in and around the city of Yogyakarta. It sits in the northeast of the city, within the current sub-provincial area (‘regency’) of Sleman (see Figure 3). Pesanggrahan Ambarrukmo has been in continuous use by the Sultanate (Figure 4). It served originally as a palace garden and hunting ground, as well as a caravanserai or stopping point for royals and colonial authorities travelling between Yogyakarta and Surakarta. The first pendopo [pavillion] on the site was constructed in the reign of HB V (reign 1823–1826, 1828–1855; Susanto and Margana, 2013: 48). This was later enlarged by HB VI (reign 1855–1877) to better support its use as a reception place for visiting dignitaries. At this time, the pesanggrahan was referred to as Arja Purna, with ‘arja’ meaning ‘safety or well-being’ and ‘purna’ meaning ‘perfection’ (Azzah, 2020: 26), although an 1872 Dutch map describes it simply as ‘Receptie Plaats van Z.H. de Sultan’ [Reception place of His Highness the Sultan] (see Figure 4). ³ Visiting colonial dignitaries were often received there, then ceremonially processed to the kraton in a display of the Sultan’s ability to draw oppositional forces towards his light (Susanto and Margana, 2013: 48).

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Figure 4.

The morphogenesis of the Ambarrukmo pesanggrahan in plan (1872–2011). An 1872 Dutch map show an orchard surrounding a modestly sized pendopo. By ca.1890 additional buildings have been added to serve the purpose of a royal retreat and pleasure garden. ⁴ The Ambarrukmo Palace Hotel arrived in 1966, with a 1972 extension encroaching upon the eastern gandhok. The 2006 construction of the mall encroached upon the western gandhok.

In the 1890s, under HB VII (reign 1877–1921), there was further renovation of the site, delivering the ensemble of royal buildings extant today, including a ndalem [inner quarters], gandhok [side wings], a bale kambang [floating pavilion], pacaosan [guardhouse] and doorloop [covered walkway] (Susanto and Margana, 2013: 58). These buildings follow traditional Javanese layouts and forms except the two-storey bale kambang [floating pavilion], which borrows from Dutch colonial style (Figure 5). It is at this point that it began to be known as Ambarrukmo, meaning ‘fragrant majesty’. It was also around this time that the site was increasingly used as a residential retreat for the Sultan and his family. It came to be thought of as a minor kraton, a reputation consolidated when, in 1921, HB VII and his queen took up residence there following his abdication (Balai Pelestarian Cagar Budaya DIY, 2019; Heston and Kartika, 2017).

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Figure 5.

The pandopo at Ambarrukmo, which today houses various cultural events including archery displays.

It is in the context of Indonesia’s move to a Republic that significant urbanisation begins at Ambarrukmo. In a show of support to the new government, the Sultanate allowed the site to be used for government offices, including the Police Inspector Academy (1949–1950) and a school (Azzah, 2020: 30; Susanto and Margana, 2013: 82–83). Following royal convention, this secular use was confined to the peripheral areas (the gandhok buildings and the west garden), leaving the more sacred, central buildings unchanged (Purwani, 2001, 2014; Ryeung et al., 2018). This secular use heralded more significant commercial changes to come.

The making of a ‘royal’ hotel at Ambarrukmo

Sukarno’s mercusuar infrastructure projects included a series of modernist-style hotels intended to support Indonesia as an aspiring international tourist destination. One of these hotels was to be in Jakarta, with the others located in Bali, Samudera Beach, and Yogyakarta (Judisseno, 2015; Figure 6). At this time, hotels in Yogyakarta were mainly clustered near the kraton and the commercial street of Malioboro, key tourist destinations. In contrast, its mercusuar hotel was to be located on the outer edge of the city, at Ambarrukmo; land that Sultan HB IX controlled through the land category of Sultanaat Gronden. The site was perfect for the envisaged hotel. It had sufficient clear land to take the large multi-storey, modernist-style structure. It was near to the airport, which would bring the targeted international tourists. And the existing royal buildings offered historic interest and royal imprimatur (Leclerc and Scott, 1993). The hotel was completed in 1966. As with other mercusuar projects, the development was funded by Japanese war reparation funds. The company responsible for building the hotel was a state-owned housing construction company P.N. Pembangunan Perumahan, which worked with expert consultants from the Japanese Taisei Construction Company. The hotel was initially managed by a Japanese international hotel chain (Susanto and Margana, 2013: 163).

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Figure 6.

The 1965 Republik Indonesia hotel stamp series, featuring President Sukarno and the soon-to-be opened Ambarrukmo Palace Hotel, with its bold international style.

Soeharto’s New Order saw Indonesia embark on a national development strategy increasingly enmeshed in a system of global capitalism. HB IX was an active player in the realisation of this national vision. Particularly relevant to Ambarrukmo’s development was HB IX’s involvement in the related portfolios of economic development and tourism, serving as Minister for EKUIN (Ekonomi, Keuangan dan Industri – Economy, Finance and Industry) and heading the Dewan Tourisme Indonesia (Indonesian Tourist Council) between 1966 and 1972 (Dahles, 2001: 69). In these roles, HB IX travelled widely to attract foreign investors and assure them of the nation’s creditworthiness. As he put it in a personally endorsed advertisement in a US news outlet, Indonesia was now ‘open for business’ (quoted in Monfries, 2015: 385).

A second phase of hotel expansion occurred in 1973 at a time when the ownership and running of the hotel had passed into the state-owned company PT Natour (National Hotel and Tourism Corporation), later the merged entity PT Hotel Indonesia International and Natour (Dahles, 2001: 71; Inna Group, n.d.). The flow of benefits to élites through their capture of nationalised enterprises remains a much discussed but often opaque aspect of Indonesia’s history. In the New Order, any number of pribumi or indigenous élites used involvement in state-owned enterprises to accumulate wealth. Just as importantly, they used such involvement to demonstrate intra-oligarchic support: cultivating alliances through displays of generosity that could be capitalised on through return favours of various kinds (Winters, 2011). This was a dynamic system of mutual patronage in which participants exerted constant effort to sustain economic and/or political benefit. Although HB IX has been identified as a key ‘indigenous capitalist’ in accounts of Indonesia’s emergent post-independence economy, it is not possible to discern if he enjoyed any direct wealth accumulation from the Ambarrukmo development (Robison, 1986: 340). A hagiographic account of the hotel’s history is careful to claim that the kraton and HB IX did not receive any financial gain from the hotel (Susanto and Margana, 2013).

Although clearly embracing the new, the initial hotel that opened at Ambarrukmo in 1966 carefully avoided infringing on the extant buildings and spatial order of the royal pesanggrahan. The hotel complex contained its footprint to the western vegetable garden (the kebon sayur), occupying a space that was appropriately peripheral relative to the royal inner sanctum (see Figure 4). Indeed, the hotel’s inaugural name – Ambarrukmo Palace Hotel – openly capitalised on its proximity to, and association with, the royal buildings on site, as well as the more general identity of Yogyakarta as a royal city. The 1973 expansion of the hotel entailed the construction of a new west wing and almost doubled the hotel’s capacity. This time, the redevelopment physically encroached upon the extant buildings, with the gandhok kiwo (left-hand access way) demolished to accommodate the new wing (see Figure 4). This encroachment was confined to a culturally tolerable outer part of the building (Heston and Kartika, 2017).

Offering royal land and buildings for government-endorsed development was a powerful way for the HB IX to express alignment with national objectives and so accumulate secular political capital in relation to Central Government. It also allowed the Sultan to enhance his prestige and authority in relation to his subjects by demonstrating how he could capture the benefit of post-independence development initiatives to the region. Although thoroughly modern in style and purpose, the site placement of the initial hotel development carefully obeyed spatial protocols of secular land use on a royal site. This was not the case in 1973, when the integrity of the outer edge of the royal buildings was compromised to accommodate a hotel extension. This morphological absorption of the hotel metaphorically reflects the Sultanate’s willingness to absorb seemingly adversarial opportunities to its own ends. In this accommodation, the hotel development at Ambarrukmo realised not only Indonesia’s national goal of pursuing the gains of global tourism, but also the Sultan’s goal of staying relevant to new economic and political directions, capturing them to the benefit of his region and people.

Centring Ambarrukmo as ‘The Gateway to Java’

A second key phase of development of the Ambarrukmo site happened across the 1990s and early 2000s and centred on the development of a large shopping mall. This was during a time when the balance of power between Soeharto’s centralised New Order government and the Yogyakarta Sultanate was under strain from a range of changes. First of these was the death of HB IX in 1988, and the succession of HB X. In the personalistic logics of both a traditional sultanate and the sultanate oligarchy of the New Order, this was a significant rupture to established relations. Another important change happened within the inner circle of Soeharto’s secular political élite: his now adult children entered as key players. Winters (2011: 159) classifies this as the ‘family stage’ of Soeharto’s oligarchic rule. Instead of operating via a code of a favour for a favour, his adult children were seen by other élites as predatory in their operations. Furthermore, with a new Sultan in place, Soeharto started to push back on aspects of the special region status enjoyed by Yogyakarta. This included placing more pressure on the region to stop delaying the implementation of the land certification processes required by the 1960 Basic Agrarian Law, delays that had protected the Sultanate’s land interests (Kurniadi, 2019: 74–79). Soeharto also challenged the special region provision that saw the Sultan automatically assume the role of provincial Governor, requiring there be limited-term elections (Kurniadi, 2019: 102). This period of unfavourable political circumstances for the Sultanate was ruptured by the entangled events of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 1998 fall of Soeharto’s New Order, including the subsequent push towards decentralisation and greater regional autonomy (Miller, 2013).

The period after 1998 marked a significant and positive change of fortune for the Yogyakarta Sultanate. Although HB X was a belated supporter of the Reformasi, he was able to quickly make political gains once Soeharto was out of office. After years of autocratic rule, decentralisation was a key focus of Reformasi, including the support of municipal and provincial elections free from cronyism. In practice, the early success of decentralisation depended significantly on the strength of existing institutions at the regional level (Firman, 2010: 401). In the case of Yogyakarta, decentralisation opportunities met a Sultanate with regional authority that was inter-generationally embedded. Within months, HB X had regained the Governorship of Yogyakarta through a sole candidacy, approved by Central Government and helpfully supported by local village leaders and endorsed by the Sultan-loyal provincial parliament (Kurniadi, 2019: 105–107).

During the New Order, oligarchic networks were ‘intricately embedded in, and extensively linked to, a system of global capital’ (Winters, 2011: 139). The nation experienced unprecedented economic growth (averaging 6.7% p.a. across a three-decade period), that led to an overall increase in per capita income, although severe inequality persisted (Thee, 2012: 690). This period also featured an effort to reset dependence on oil exports and to grow other sectors, including manufacturing and services. Tourism comprised 5.8% of national export earnings by 1989, doubling since 1985. Within this national context, Yogyakarta emerged as a leading destination, second only to Bali (Hampton, 2003: 89), with visitor numbers quadrupling between 1986 and 1996. The city’s reliance on tourism became so pronounced that it has been described as having an ‘almost total dependency’ on the sector (Prabawa, 2010: 77). In line with these trends, the Directorate General of Tourism had set a target of at least 2.5 million arrivals and US$2.25–3.15 billion in foreign exchange earnings by the end of the Repelita V period (1989–1994; Hall, 2012: 158). This arrivals target was reached by 1991, although not the revenue target. Growth in tourism infrastructure was needed to meet these targets. Unlike in the earlier New Order period, a transition from state-owned enterprises to public-private partnerships was seen as the way to enable such growth.

This directly implicated Ambarrukmo. In 1997 the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) identified several state hotels, including Ambarrukmo, where there had been state- based ‘overspending and other irregularities’ (The Jakarta Post, 1997a: 1). Exposés such as this vindicated privatisation measures. In 1995 it was announced that the loss-making Hotel Indonesia International, the entity responsible for Ambarrukmo, was to seek private partners to support a series of ‘life saving renovations and expansions’ to its hotels. Significantly, this included the addition of malls to existing hotel facilities (The Jakarta Post, 1997b: 12). The emphasis on mall construction was consistent with a more domestically driven growth in consumption lifestyle demanded by an emergent middle class and their aspirations (Gerke, 2000). As Van Leeuwen (2011) put it, the new middle-classes of the New Order period were ‘lost in mall’, such that visiting a mall, often just to browse, was a standard weekly outing. The next direction of change for Ambarrukmo was set.

In mid-1995 it was announced that a large-scale shopping mall was to be built at Ambarrukmo. Delayed by the financial crisis and the fall of Soeharto, the mall was completed and opened by 2006. Located on the western side of the traditional buildings, Plaza Ambarrukmo (or ‘AmPlaz’) offers a retail area of 45,000 m² housing some 230 brands, both international and local, and targets a decidedly middle- and upper-class demographic (Bahri et al., 2009; Figure 7). The developers of AmPlaz comprised a consortium of investors, operating through PT Putera Mataram Indah Wisata, which includes the Sultan’s brother KGPH Hadiwinoto as a minor shareholder. These are all Yogyakarta-based businessmen with long-standing relationships to the Sultan, including the Sampoerna Group, the Formula Group, and the Santika Group. ⁵ These same consortia also manage the mall through the company PT Putera Mataram Mitra Sejahtera.

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Figure 7.

An exterior view of Plaza Ambarrukmo.

Unlike the earlier phases of development on the pesanggrahan, the Plaza Ambarrukmo project met an increasingly mixed public reception. This reflects wider democratisation trends that started in the Reform era. On the supportive side, some saw the use of Ambarrukmo for the mall development as signalling HB X’s intention to campaign for a national political role, perhaps even candidacy for the Presidency (Kurniadi, 2019: 158). It was a hope not yet realised. Others viewed the mall development less favourably. One group opposed the development because it resulted in the closure and relocation of the elementary school, operating for decades on the western part of the site with permission from the kraton (Bahri et al., 2009; The Jakarta Post, 2004: 4). Another opposition voice came from a local environmental NGO called WALHI, which complained that the developers and the kraton were by-passing environmental impact guidelines because 24 kraton-linked houses were to be destroyed to make way for the mall. ⁶

Further vocal opposition came from a branch of the royal household itself. Three members of the extended royal family filed a complaint with the police claiming that HB X had illegally appropriated the land to be used for the mall, specifying that it and the buildings on it were the personal property of their ancestor HB VII, who had used the land and buildings as his home after abdicating and leaving the main kraton (The Jakarta Post, 2003a: 5). The royal complainants further argued that the current Sultan had ‘changed the ownership of the plot of land and building’. Their evidence was a Certificate of Registration for Ambarrukmo issued by the Yogyakarta Land Office in November 1995, just months after the public announcement that Hotel Indonesia International hotels were to be redeveloped and extended. The certificate ambiguously identifies a ‘Hamengkubuwono’, with no Roman numeral specifier, as the title holder. This is an ambiguity that allowed HB X to proceed with the development, but which encouraged complainants to accuse him of a ‘form of fraud’ that violated ‘palace law’. In responding to the controversy, HB X explained that the palace, ‘was not a body with a recognisable legal basis’ and so ‘its properties’ were ‘registered’ under this generic royal name ‘Hamengkubuwono’. This same media report also reiterated that the Sultan had no power to sell sultanate lands, only to ‘make use of them’ (The Jakarta Post, 2003b: 5). In other words, this internal royal challenge became an opportunity for HB X to clarify publicly that the involvement of the Sultanate at Ambarrukmo was as an institution not as an individual. It also encouraged the regional authority to clarify aristocratic rights over land in Yogyakarta. Just one year after the mall opened, the Yogyakarta Government issued a by-law (7/2007) which specified land as a ‘mandatory’ concern of the provincial government. It further clarified that ‘land with the ownership of the Yogyakarta Sultanate … is still the Right of the Ownership under the authority of the Kasultanan’ and is, therefore, not affected by the Basic Agrarian Law (Yogyakarta Bylaw No. 7/2007, quoted in Kurniadi, 2019: 158–159). The land challenge that Ambarrukmo Mall activated created a response by HB X, both as royal potentate and as democratic Governor, that further secured the Sultanate’s authority over royal land.

One of the strongest opposition voices to the mall development was the heritage lobby, which was becoming increasingly powerful in Yogyakarta, backed by stronger heritage laws at both the provincial and national level. Their concern was the fact that the mall development required the partial demolition of the gandhok tengen (the right side gandhok; see Figure 4). Initially, members of the royal family, notably the Sultan’s brother who served as the public spokesperson for the development, guaranteed the mall development would not damage any traditional buildings. It then became clear that the plans would involve the partial demolition of the gandhok tengen, ostensibly to ‘enhance the view of the mall’ from the hotel (Tempo, 2004: 3). ⁷ This was an encroachment which, in formal morphological terms, matched the earlier encroachment on the gandhok kiwo for the hotel extension. Indeed, one line of justification was that this encroachment ‘balanced’ the earlier one (Heston and Kartika, 2017). So intense was the concern of heritage officials that, on the scheduled demolition date, representatives of the regional offices of Balai Pelestarian Peninggalan Purbakala (BP3 – Centre for Preservation of Archaeological Heritage) and the Department of Culture and Tourism (Budpar) arrived on site to monitor ‘the condition before and after the dismantling’. ⁸ This most recent phase of development, wherein the pesanggrahan buildings were both restored and encroached upon, finally brought the pesanggrahan under the protection of formal heritage regulations. In 2007 pesanggrahan Ambarrukmo was listed, although the registered site excluded both the eastern and western gardens, now the home of the hotel and the mall, respectively.

As is clear, the mall development at Ambarrukmo was subject to far more debate than the initial hotel development. This controversy reflects a more robust democracy, with various interests speaking out as never before. Under such circumstances, the Sultanate was drawn into unprecedented public accountability which, even if ultimately protected by royal protocols or secular law, reshaped how sultanate power could be realised. This was instantiated in a 2010 renovation and extension of the hotel. Led by the same consortia that developed the mall, the extension was announced by the ‘spokesperson’ for the development, KGPH Hadiwinoto, HB X’s brother (Tempo, 2010: 4). In announcing the development, the brother felt compelled to clarify two key issues. First, he made clear that the hotel refurbishment was not drawing on Special Region public money. Second, he made clear that the kraton did not have shares in the development company PT Putra Mataram Indah Wisata. The only role of the palace, he emphasised, was to provide the 30-year ‘build-operate-transfer’ to the developing firm. What is notable here is a defensiveness in tone and the publicly performed accountability to existing laws. In parallel to this reshaping of sultanate political power, the relaunched Ambarrukmo hotel claims royal heritage even more explicitly as part of its brand. For example, the current web site of the hotel presents it as steeped in royal Javanese history. ⁹ A commissioned illustrated history describes Ambarrukmo as ‘a hotel that is also a museum’ (Susanto and Margana, 2013: 261). In the royal buildings sited between the mall and the hotel, the local public and tourists can take classes in or watch demonstrations of traditional cultural activities, including Javanese dance, archery, aksara Jawa (Java script), bamboo flute, royal high tea protocols, and Javanese rijsttafel (rice table; 5 Star City Hotel Yogyakarta, n.d.). Today the pesanggrahan Ambarrukmo, Royal Ambarrukmo Hotel and Plaza Ambarrukmo are branded as a single entity: ‘The gateway of Java’. This is a label that reinstates in a very different form the historical role of pesanggrahan Ambarrukmo. ¹⁰ A newspaper report on the development from 2005 goes so far as to suggest that without this development the traditional pesanggrahan of Ambarrukmo might not have stood as ‘steadfast’ as it does today (The Jakarta Post, 2005: 17).

Conclusion

In a 2013 reflection on the persistence of the neoliberal logics of urban development, Peck et al. (2013) argue for attending to the ‘contextually embedded’ and ‘variegated geographies’ of its reproduction and realisation (pp. 1092–1093). They argue that urban development trajectories are not merely at the ‘receiving end’ of neoliberal processes imposed from above or fully encased within ‘boundless marketisation and commodification’. Most centrally, neoliberal development trends realise in ‘contextually specific histories of institutional organisation’. Ambarrukmo offers an instantiation of this. Urban development initiatives – an international tourism hotel and a large-scale shopping mall – that elsewhere might be adequately accounted for as effects of neoliberal globalisation are realised in and through the institution of monarchy. Furthermore, that monarchy is not some oppositional, tradition-bound entity but a politically flexible and economically ambitious institution. Following independence, the Indonesian government integrated the Yogyakarta Sultan into its development vision. In turn, the Sultan offered the Ambarrukmo site for tourism and consumption-linked development thereby helping to secure and maintain special status for the Yogyakarta region. The contradictory logics of secular national government and a regional Sultanate were uneasily resolved in a purposefully negotiated balance of interests. The urban development project at Ambarrukmo played a key role in this by offering opportunity for symbolic statements of aligned national purpose, as well as economic opportunities to cooperate. Far from a becoming a residual entity in the new nation, the Sultanate actively used urban development opportunities to align its fortunes with that of state-capitalism in the first instance, and state-endorsed, neoliberal entrepreneurialism in the second instance. It successfully extracted political and economic advantage for its region that extends well beyond the specifics of the Ambarrukmo site and the tourism and consumption ventures it houses.

The Ambarrukmo’s development trajectory sits at the intersection of royal power, secular nationalism, oligarchic expansion and neoliberal globalisation. The deep entanglement between the Yogyakarta monarchy, the secular state and market-linked development has generated novel hybridities of city-building agency. This challenges not only the assumptions about what institutions are agents of urban change, but also the coherence of such institutions. This bears specifically on the anointed triumvirate of state, market and civil society. In the case of Yogyakarta, for example, the Sultan is not only a sacredly-ordained ruler but also a secular, democratically framed governor; not only the regulating authority over the use of Ambarrukmo land, but also a venture capitalist in relation to its development.

Finally, this case presses upon the way we theorise agency in relation to city building more widely. Conventionally, urban scholarship sees such city building as being the result of purposeful and impactful acting, be that by an individual, an institution or a corporation. We certainly see such recognisable agency when HB IX works in unison with the state, both as a royal and a bureaucrat-capitalist, to develop tourism in Central Java by offering up the Ambarrukmo site for hotel development. We also see it when HB X collaborates with venture capitalists to turn Ambarrukmo into a flagship consumption experience. But in Ambarrukmo we may also be seeing another kind of agency at work. This is the obdurate effects of the pesanggrahan Ambarrukmo site itself. The buildings on this site have evidently been encroached upon, first by state-led nationalist development aspirations in the form of a hotel, then by neoliberal commercial aspirations in the form of a shopping centre. Yet, it remains unclear as to whether this royal site has been subject to these exogenous forces or whether the inherited royal attributes of this site has pulled them into its own orbit of reinvention.