KETIDAKSEIMBANGAN WILAYAH DALAM PEMBANGUNAN: SATU PERBANDINGAN PEKALI VARIASI SPATIAL DI MALAYSIA DAN SUMATERA UTARA

Many Southeast Asian countries which have experienced rapid economic growth since the early eighties have begun to realise and taken steps to ensure national development efforts are accompanied by equity for the purpose of more sustainable development. Spatial balance has become one of the important development agendas for both neighboring countries Malaysia and Indonesia although the context of concerns for this issue is a little different. In Malaysia, the motive for regional planning is the multidimensional imbalances including race, location and economic sectors while in Indonesia, the race factor is seen as non-contributing. The purpose of this paper is to compare spatial inequality in the regional development process in Malaysia and North Sumatera using the Williamson coefficients for household income and GNP per capita indicators over time. An early expectation is that the dynamics of regional inequality will follow the inverted-U shape with gap between regions worsening with development before reaching a point of inversion where further development will be accompanied by a more balanced regional development.