City of Surabaya is planned to grow as a center of national development beside other cities such as Jakarta, Medan, Bandung, Semarang, Ujung Padang, Manado and Banjarmasin. This hierarcy city planning is very important in redistributing the all aspect of resources including human resources accross the country especially since Indonesia in an archipelago country. The important consequency of that planning is Surabaya has been grown as a second important city in Indonesia after jakarta and also is becoming a major growth pole for East Java, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, East Timor, and South Kalimantan.

Since city of Surabaya has been grown as an important center for economic development both in national and regional level, the city itself is becoming much larger than before and now it can be classified as a metropolitan area because the number of population already exceed one million people. The population growth in Surabaya City like other city's population growth in Indonesia significantly influenced by rural urban migration. Demographers believe that 35 percent of level of urbanization in Indonesia is contributed by the natural increase in the urban areas (since the age structure in urban areas is still young-age), 65 percent is contributed by rural-urban migration and reclassification (see Wirosuhardjo, 1992). Related to the successful of family planning, in the future, rural-urban migration become the major factor to the level of urbanization.

The high population growth in Surabaya city creates a special problems for the city such as unemployment, slum areas, pollution etc. In order to solve those problems especially the quality of environment and maintaining the level of economic development, urban planners develop the regional planning approach which is integrate the city planning with its surrounding city. This approach called GERBANGKERTOSUSILO (Gresik-Bangkalan-Mojokerto-Surabaya-Sidoarjo-Lamongan) regional development. This policy was launched in 1988 by the Governor of East Java.

Gerbangkertosusila policy incorporate the economic development with environmental planning and management into an overall strategic planning process, and addressed topics such as water resource cycles, upstream water supply, urban water cycles, flooding risk, air pollution, overcrowded housing stock, and urban kampung upgrading. As the basis for the Master Plan Surabaya 2000 (MPS 2000), Gerbangkertosusila has had partial success in linking land use planning with economic and environmental planning.

Under the MPS 2000 and Gerbangkertosusila master plan, undustrial center of city of Surabaya will be expanding to Gersik, center of trade will be expanding to Sidoarjo, residential area to Mojokerto and Sidoarjo, and promoting Bangkalan and Lamongan as a hinterland of Surabaya.

The Development of urban and regional planning influences the population development within the area. Redistributing the economic growth pole from Surabaya to surrounding areas will followed by redistributing of population distribution. However since the regonal planning policy just launched in teh year of 1987 it is still questionabel whether the population distribution has influenced by that policy. Unfortunately, the latest data on population development that has highly respected was the 1990 Population Census. It means that examination the impact of regional planning policy on population distribution within the GERBANGKERTOSUSILO area could not be done yet perfectly.

Population Development Within the GERBANGKERTOSUSILO area

Table-1 show the population growth in the area during the year of 1980 to 1990. In 1980, GERBANGKERTOSUSILO was inhabited by 5,406,388 people or 18.53 percent of population in East Java at that time. The number has increased to 6,490,463 people or 19.97 percent of total population in East Java in 1990 (see table-1).


During the year of 1980 to 1990, population in area of GERBANGKERTOSUSILO had increased in average by 2.0 percent per year while outside the GERBANGKERTOSUSILO area had increased by 0.94 percent per year. It is clear that during teh year of 1980 to1990, the percentage of population increase in GERBANGKERTOSUSILO area was higher that outside the area. It reflects that GERBANGKERTOSUSILO area was more attractive that the outside area, so people tend to move to this area.