And indeed, these two Indonesian leaders know first-hand the challenges facing Indonesia’s metropolitan areas as the nation, like all of Southeast Asia, moves from the rural to the urban. But intriguingly, from Hollywood — just a few miles from our conference site — came a blockbuster film that might also offer up an unintentional message for Indonesia’s urban leaders. 

Black Panther, Marvel’s early-2018 entry in its cinematic universe, has grossed more than US$1.3 billion since its release, including some $50 million in Southeast Asia. Indonesia alone accounted for nearly $12.5 million of that total.

But more than setting a new standard for comic-book inspired projects, the film, set in the Marvel Universe, has caught the attention of urbanists in its presentation of city life. Indeed, Southeast Asia’s property developers and urban planners should take note of how urban life in the film is depicted.

A good part of the film takes place in Birnin Zana, the capital of Wakanda, a fictional African nation protected from outside influences by the Black Panther, whose real identity is T’Challa, the king of the technologically advanced, but isolationist country.  

What is striking about Wakandan city life is how different it is from what we have become accustomed to see in movies offering a view of modernity, as well as in our own travels through the rapidly growing urban areas of much of ASEAN.

Architectural Digest’s Marc Malkin writes that rather than seeing the ubiquitous glass-and-steel towers and sterile street life that we have come to expect in the cities of tomorrow, we are shown in the film Black Panther a colorful cityscape infused with African textures, designs and colors, organized to emphasize human interaction. All this contributes to the fictional capital’s unique, memorable “vibe” — one where skyscrapers rise from vibrant communities below. 

Sadly, the same cannot be always said about Southeast Asia’s cities, including parts of Jakarta. 

Well-intentioned zoning rules separating commercial and residential districts may well reduce a city’s vibrancy.  And, what is clear in a journey through the region’s megacities is that the scale and direction of urbanization has led too often to reduced livability and burgeoning inequality between those who can and those who cannot afford the best that a city has to offer.

This challenge is likely to only grow, as more people move from rural to urban areas and inequality increases across the region.

A recent United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ annual World Urbanization Prospects report projects that many of Southeast Asia’s cities will experience double-digit growth between 2015 and 2025. Jakarta is expected to grow 22 percent from 10.3 to 12.6 million. Manila is projected to grow 17.4 percent from 12.9 to 15.2 million people; and Bangkok 11.2 percent from 9.3 to 11.0 million.

This rampant urbanization has come at the expense of the region’s architectural richness and cultural fabric. Gone are the traditional forms of architecture such as the wooden homes with their gabled roofs, built on stilts to evade the seasonal floods. 

Street vendors have been banished in parts of some cities as urban planners seek to impose a new, cleaner but perhaps more sterile vision of the modern city. And, as street life has disappeared, the longstanding, vibrant communities that made these cities unique have also come under threat if not vanished.

What replaces many a cityscape is a generic blandness. This “mallification”, punctuated by the existence of a generic mega mall transplanted from country to country, too often draws little or no design influence from a country’s legacy. This is all too sadly evident even in a region that is home to many UNESCO world heritage sites. These sites draw thousands of visitors each year for inspiration, but seem to have been relegated to the past.

This harsh division of past and present has not always existed in the region. One needs only to look to Cambodia’s “Golden Age” of the 1960s as an example, when Cambodian architect Vann Molyvann fused building features of the Angkor Empire with modern design elements to help launch the “New Khmer Architecture” movement.

By looking back, Molyvann’s forward-looking designs remained authentically Khmer. Sadly, many of his works have succumbed to Phnom Penh’s breakneck development and to a vision of urbanization that seemingly emphasizes size over authenticity. 

It is this authenticity, however, that is among the critical ingredients in what goes into designing a healthy city. Rather than ignore its history, urban planners and developers should embrace a city’s heritage, culture and environment to create a unique sense of place and identity.  This uniqueness, of seeing something we have never seen before and that exists nowhere else, is what we also react to when we see the vibrant streets of Wakanda on screen. 

Spoiler alert! As the movie Black Panther draws to a close, Wakanda’s leader, T’Challa, informs the UN of his decision to reveal the true state of his country’s advancements and development.

The scene concludes with a foreign official responding by asking what Wakanda has to offer the world.  

Wakanda shows there need not be a default setting for what urbanization looks and feels like. This need not simply be Hollywood make-believe.

Cities everywhere will continue to grow, but they can also do so by embracing their rich pasts while building a vibrant, unique and inclusive future.  

Our hope is that Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, can show the way.

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Curtis S. Chin, a former United States ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group, LLC. Jose B. Collazo, a Southeast Asia analyst, is an associate at RiverPeak Group, LLC. The views expressed are their own.

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