Tony Widjarnarso

Tony joined the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) in May 2023 as the Urban Transformation Lead. As the urban lead of the organization, he leads and supports research pertaining to the formulation of the WBA’s urban benchmark, while at the same time coordinating with the communications team for the consultation and dissemination of the urban benchmark to WBA’s allies and stakeholders.

Prior to joining the WBA, Tony was working in the private sector, taking up roles that cumulatively cuts across all the urban development phases: from feasibility studies, architectural and urban design, construction, and project management. Afterwards, he joined the World Bank branch office in Jakarta as an urban planning consultant, where he conducted background research for projects, and helped implement the Bank’s urban programs on various urban topics, ranging from municipal spatial data infrastructure, private-led urban developments, slum upgrading, universal accessibility standards implementation in the context of slum settlements, and resilient post-disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction – Advocating for a more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban development processes and products to project stakeholders, including local governments, community members, as well as private and academia actors as he delivered these projects.

An enthusiast for evidence-based urban policy making and urban development history, he enjoys reading up on urban development history, tinkering and visualizing urban geospatial datasets, and writing on urban topics. Tony holds a Master of Regional Planning degree from Cornell University’s City and Regional Planning program, and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Institut Teknologi Bandung.