A Game Theory Approach to the Preference of the Street Development in Semarang Chinatown

Abstract

The Chinatown of Semarang consists of many historical streets along with their heritage temples where a few informal social and physical urban developments occurred in those streets. This calls for a systematic urban redevelopment decision-making process. Using spatial data to demonstrate the current and future situations of street development, this paper aims at investigating the best scenario to develop Semarang Chinatown and also the advantages as well as the limitations of game theoretical models for the development of Semarang Chinatown. Therefore, we have developed game model based on Nash game theory, in which a certain action results in a certain payoff, for the case study. Our study demonstrates that game theory can provide key strategic decision of Chinatown development by showing the different payoffs of choosing main streets that are more urgent to be developed and selecting the equilibrium in which involved important stakeholders best interests. We also found limitations on using game theory in our case study especially regarding the assumption of preferred historical streets in the area.