Year Beginning

 

The Story of Jakarta. Photo: marvelet

This post is the result of a good idea suggested over at Jakartass, where it was asked that 29 folk  join in a group writing exercise to “think out of the box” regarding Jakarta.  Jakartass has set up a  specific website   to host all contributions as an ongoing think tank.  The social, economic, and ecological problems of Jakarta are serious. And I have not forgotten that It is one thing to be blogging about them in front of a computer and quite another if you are dealing with your flooded home in Kampung Malayu.    

By way of introduction.

I first became interested in Indonesia because of its fantastic biodiversity. I have spent many hours hiking through the highland forests of Bali, Lombok, and Java. Kebun Raya Bogor never ceases to amaze me. As it would happen I ended up marrying an Indonesian from a middle class family. Her father grew up on Saparua, is a former governor of Tidore, has a reputation as an honest man, he now works for MUI.

My wife has three brothers and three sisters, so seven children in the family. Two of the brothers are airline pilots, one a professional writer, one of her sisters works in the financial district of Jakarta, one is a small business owner, and one raises a family. None of them are originally from Jakarta. None of them particularly like Jakarta but there they are. It is the place to be.

When I visit it is inevitable that we sit in the living room, smoke kreteks, drink tea, and talk politics late through the evening. They tell me that “Indonesia is a rich nation but the people are poor”. “Why is that?” they would ask. I would half joke that Indonesia should send the Netherlands a bill for their 400 years of extractive colonial rule. They would laugh.

Visitors come and go at all hours at the home they share in the suburbs of Jakarta, just outside of Depok.

When I started Jakarta Urbanblog they said, “Why are you doing that? Jakarta is crazy”. As for Jakarta, I feared it, feared for it. It IS crazy. Never had I seen anything like it before. It was out of my experience. I learned about machet, banjir, pickpockets, beggars, cripples, banci, and mal.

One day while driving through the city, near a glass and steel highrise, I spotted a number of plastic buckets and an open manhole cover along the sidewalk. A man then slowly crawled out from the underground covered head to foot in a black sludge that must have consisted of everything Jakarta. I had to raise an eyebrow at that. We drove on.

Eventually, when I watched the news on MetroTV, I could actually understand what was being said though it was being said at an amazing high rate of speed.

The more trips I made into and out of Jakarta the more compelling the city became to me. The metaphor on one hand was that of an overloaded speeding truck, belching diesel smoke, speeding down the jalan tol with one of its front wheels about to come off, on the other hand the city woke up, tired to move, ground to halt, and on the third hand (this is Jakarta after all), a pleasant Sunday drive to Jakarta Kota, coffee and breakfast at the Batavia Café, a walk around the old town, people just living their lives.

The Problem Stated.

On August 8, 2007, for the first time, Jakartans were allowed to vote directly for their governor. The Associated Press reported, “I’m very happy; I’ve been looking forward to this day,” said Wanem, a 47-year-old homemaker, as she waited to cast her ballot. “We never had the right to choose before; someone always did it for us.” This, at least, was one positive result which emerged out of the dark days of 1997 and 1998, the krismon, and reformasi. In short, former Deputy Governor, Fauzi Bowo, a Golkar Party property tycoon, was elected the new governor.

As Deden Rukmana has reported in Indonesia’s Urban Studies it is customary that newly elected officials launch 100 day priorities. Governor Bowo’s priority program includes:

1. Mitigating traffic jams caused by the ongoing construction of busway corridors VIII, IX and X.

2. Managing and re-routing traffic.

3. Preparing Mass Rapid Transit project.

4. Improving existing city institutions and issuing related regulations.

5. Mitigating floods.

6. Giving aid to the poor in the form of scholarship, staple foods and health insurance.

7. Providing more regulations, public facilities and easier access for handicapped.

8. Revitalizing Jakarta’s slums.

9. Fighting drug abuse.

10. Intensifying communication between the governor and Jakartans.

Mr. Bowo asserted that his program “represents the society’s need, implement transparently, developing society’s participation, based on law, oriented on the vision, supervised, effective and efficient, and doing professionally”. His plan “will help create a more comfortable Jakarta for everyone”. Hmmm?

Mr. Bowo’s 100 day priorities began on October 8, 2007 and end on January 15, 2008. We’re almost, if not there, already. Time is up, where are we? Not too far I should think.

When it was suggested that an essay be written about what I would do if I were Jakarta’s governor I felt the foreboding sense of overwhelming insoluble problems. One just wants to float belly up and drift down the Ciliwung River and forget it. With certainty, if these issues, and others I will address below, are not addressed in a more robust fashion in which they have in the past it is likely that Jakarta will implode and sink beneath the Java Sea. What a dire prediction. Seeming both possible and probable yet I would hate to see it so.

Unlike Mr. Bowo I have no list of priorities because Jakarta is now a patient with multiple chronic diseases. One simply cannot tease them apart and address them one by one. The problems must be addressed simultaneously. Generally, they fall under the headings of health, education, and welfare. Take your pick. All issues are movable. The interrelated nature of the problems cannot be understated. As the great American naturalist John Muir once said, “everything is connected to everything else”.  And nothing is solved in 100 days.

Just for fun I took a poll of the Indonesian community here where I live. I asked, “If you were Jakarta’s governor what is the first thing that you would do?”. Everyone replied, “Traffic”. Mr. Bowo’s first three priorities all have to do with traffic.

So, traffic it is.  …alon alon asal klakson…

Bogor Toll Road. Photo: The Jakarta Post

A byproduct of traffic is air pollution which everyone hates and Jakarta is especially notorious for. A 2004 report from the US-Asia Environmental Partnership program of the US aid agency found that in 2003, there were only seven days when Jakarta’s air quality was in the healthy range — down from 2002, when Jakartans could breathe easy for a full 22 days.

Budi Hartanyo, professor of public health at the University of Indonesia, has stated “that traffic in Jakarta is responsible for 70% of the nitrogen oxide and particulate matter in the city’s air. Respiratory inflammation accounts for 12.6% of deaths in Jakarta, twice that in proportion to the rest of the country. Before 2001, 35% of Jakarta’s elementary school children had lead levels higher than WHO (World Health Organization) standards. This has been reduced to 3% as leaded gasoline has been phased out. However, benzene, a known carcinogen, is on the rise. “The city itself “, he declares, “is a major health hazard”.

Here is an example of some dead end thinking from  Jonathan McIntosh as reported in the Asia Sentinel of Septemebr 24, 2007:

“They’re celebrating International ‘No Car Day’ in Jakarta and you are Sutiyoso, outgoing governor of the mega-city you’ve dubbed Hijau Jakarta - Green Jakarta - more in hope than in achievement given the reality of this grey-hued, perma-smogged sprawl of 25-odd million.

Pleasingly, your municipal minions have even scrawled the legend along the road that fronts the fetid lake separating leafy Menteng from corporate Kuningan, the watercourse that so offends the noses of the well-heeled working out at the Ritz Carlton spa, where they pay up to US$400 for a haircut from someone flown in from Singapore, saving you the airfare. That’s about what the average Indonesian earns in a year.

Everyone know you’re green because you say you are, and you are an ex-general, a tough guy famous for kicking butt , so you are used to being listened to. You lead by example, so how do you mark No Car Day?

Of course, you arrive at the launch chauffeured in your official car.

No matter, you feel good anyway, you’ve shown leadership in one of the world’s most polluted cities. You give a speech decrying the fact that the “increasing use of private cars worsens air quality in the city.”

“I appreciate those who have left their cars at home and used public transport during this No Car Day,” you add. Those except Governor Sutiyoso, of course”.

 

Commute. Photo: The Jakarta Post

 

 Urbanization. In 2007, it was reported that more people on the planet now live in urban areas than not and that this trend will continue. Indonesia is no exception to this trend with current urbanization rates of Indonesian cities running at 20% to 30% a year.

Deden Rukmana cites a commentary piece by Wilmar Salim published by the Jakarta Post on November 3, 2007: “…the root causes of [Jakarta's problems] are centered on population pressures and environmental deterioration. …around 111,000 people move from Jakarta to its neighboring cities annually, as many as 123,000 migrants come to Jakarta every year from other places in the country… Unfortunately, many people who move from Jakarta to Bekasi, Tangerang, and Depok still need to commute to Jakarta everyday for work. Traffic jams at notorious bottleneck areas of the inner city toll road, such as at Cawang and Tomang are an everyday phenomenon… migrants from other regions are trying their luck in the big smoke.

Many are jobless, homeless, unskilled or uneducated and often end up on the streets, begging, scavenging, or working casually, and living in slums. Many probably didn’t think of the consequences of moving to a big city before coming to Jakarta, but the image of the capital city as a place of opportunity may have persuaded them to come and just try their luck”.

Merdeka. Photo: The Jakarta Post

I have met many Jakartans who are there simply out of economic reasons. They seem to be the lucky ones who enjoy the benefits of making the money but they dislike the city. Their dream is to go home.

 

Tanah Abang Bridge. Photo: The Jakarta Post

 

Flooding. The Jakarta Post reported on January 2, 2008 that 46 of 56 subdistricts in West Jakarta had flooded. The stated reasons, “garbage and mud had not been removed from the Mookevart River leaving the river only one meter deep, far less than its normal depth of three meters” and because of “persistent lack of funds”.

The city is sinking into the swampy delta of the Ciliwung River at the same time that global climate change and sea level rise are being realized. Forty percent of Jakarta lies below sea level. But flood mitigation programs, of which there have been many, can only reduce the risks. They cannot solve the problem.

Floods will continue to be a fact of life for Jakarta into the foreseeable future and will be costly in terms of loss of economic productivity and human suffering. Those who have held power in Batavia / Jakarta have made and then remade the city in their own image. Try as much as they desired to hammer it into what they wished it or dreamed it to be other realities always seemed to barge in. And this time the reality is water.

Urban Planning. Jakarta urban planners have produced a number of comprehensive planning documents over the decades most of which have failed due to the lack of political will or through politcal corruption.

Jakarta has outrun its master plan due to lack of infrastructure and commitment to planning principles. Indeed, as Dr. Haryo Winoso of the Department of Regional and City Planning, Institut Teknologi Bandung, has written in City for the Rich, “central planning has created uneven development through segregating spatial land use and the people into enclaves of the rich and poor”.

Here are some example of the results of weak or non-existence urban planning. More dead end thinking.

Currently only 3% of Jakarta’s 1.3 cubic meters of sewage per day is treated. The figure is rather staggering and begs the questions of where is it all going, what is it doing to the environment, and public health?

In the October - Decmber, 2004 issue of Inside Indonesia Anton Lucas in his article Jakarta’s Rubbish Nightmare: Mountain of garbage and nowhere to put it has it that “Jakarta produces as much as 6,250 tons of rubbish a day. It does not have enough trucks to collect all the rubbish, let alone enough space to put it. For 17 years the Jakarta administration has used a 108 hectare tract of land in the neighbouring municipality of Bekasi as a dump”.

The Greater Jakarta area produces 25,000 cubic meters of solid waste daily, 4,000 cubic meters from traditional markets alone. The sobering fact is that 70% of the waste is organic and that some 1,400 cubic meters end up in Jakarta Bay everyday.

This is Jakarta.

Susan Abeyasekere in Jakarta: A History states, “the central fallacy [of Jakarta] which has persisted from 1619 to the present is that it is possible to create a city for the privileged few, cut off from the countryside and the majority of the poor”. 

This is the ultimate dead end thinking.

Traffic, floods, H5N1, dengue fever, inappropriate land use, rapid urban expansion, air and water pollution, corruption, crime, street brawls, kampungs, and evictions are regular features in the Jakarta news. They appear like clockwork in a regular beat. 

The Problem addressed. 

What would I do if I were Jakarta’s governor?

The problems must be addressed simultaneously. Generally, they fall under the headings of health, education, and welfare. Take your pick. All issues are movable. The interrelated nature of the problems cannot be understated.  

Traffic. Improved air quality can be had by requiring catalytic converters on all cars and improving fuel quality.

As governor no new cars would be allowed to be imported to Indonesia without catalytic converters and certainly none sold in Jakarta. Fuel standards for gas and diesel need be raised.

The car free day experiment on-going in Jakarta has improved air quality when there are car free days.

The Jakarta Post called it “no clue day.” Still, it’s a good idea. And the reason why it’s a good idea it that represents an new ermergent idea. The more it is practiced the better it will become. Jakartans will get used to it if it is kept in place and the events better organized.

In the short term traffic must be mitigated, managed, and mass rapid transit projects initiated and completed. First, I would immediately halt the proposed subway project. As governor I would double 14.3 km of Busway project. 

I would immediately lay new elevated track adjacent to the ring toll road corridors and not simply run mass transit along the Jakarta - Bogor axis but have it circle Jakarta through Bekasi to Depok to Tangerang.

It is from these suburbs which emerge the traffic. These suburbs should be interconnected through mass transit and then economically developed so people can work near to where they live. This would further reduce the number of cars on the road system. I then would extend mass transit service to Soekarno-Hatta International.

Standard fares and services would be established for all who use the transit system. I would bring fare costs down for mass transit by increasing the toll road fees for passenger vehicles and save energy costs through reducing the number of vehicles on the road.

I would nationalize the toll road system as a matter of Indonesian national security and because it is inappropriate that a basic transportation service should be privately run for profit.

If mass transit is clean, safe, efficient, and cheap it will be used.

Urbanization. Cities are attractive because they represent a perceived and real economic opportunity. The key toward solving the traffic problem, and most of Jakarta’s other problems, in the long term, is to slow the process of urbanization. This means that the economic activity which generates the wealth of Jakarta, which in turn makes it attractive to migrants, must be decentralized. The economic wealth generated by Jakarta must not simply be reinvested into Jakarta creating a vicious cycle of development and growth.

New economic investment must be made equitably through the towns and villages of Indonesia, starting with Java, as that is the island with the largest number of urbanizing cities. If it is economically attractive to stay in your village or town then you will.

Disinvestment in Jakarta and reinvestment dispersed throughout Indonesia would be a high priority.

Floods. M. Caljoun, Peter J.M. Nas, and Pratiwo have written in an excellent report titled Flooding in Jakarta: Towards a blue city with Improved water management. In it they conclude “a completely different view of the city and its problems are required, one aimed at furnishing ample room for water. Instead of a grey or merely green city, Jakarta should also aspire to become a blue city”.

What they are implying is that water will go where it will (New Orleans for example) and over the long term it is best to let it go there and adapt to the new reality. 

In the long term I would address the flooding issue through comprehensive survey and mapping of the Jakarta watershed from Puncak to the Java Sea. Simultanesouly I would survey, map, and preserve the segmented patches of remaining agricultural land that remain on Jakarta’s fringes which can provide important ecological services such as water retention, micro-climate control, green space, and conservation of visual quality.

Essentially I would make water work for Jakarta by creating a series of small dams throughout the watershed to slow the course of the water flow, divert it into manmade ponds and lakes; clean, restore, and maintain all diversionary canals; reforest stream banks and coastal mangrove forest.

The slowed and stored water could be used for a number of projects including aquaculture, provide sources of clean drinking water, and be utilized in sewage treatment.

Urban Planning. A comprehensive urban plan is what Jakarta immediately needs. As governor I would revitalize the city planning office, make it the central management office of my administration, and provide it with state of the art geographic information technologies.

I would develop a “think out of the box tank” of young urban geographers in cooperation with the University of Indonesia and initiate comprehensive planning legislation based on community driven approaches to development.

Peter Nas and Margriet Veenma, over a decade ago in 1996, in Towards Sustainable Cities: Urban Community and Environment in the Third World wrote, “Urban environmental management has to cut Gordian knot” of special interets… “not like Alexander with a stroke, but more cautiously, most probably in a step by step application of environmental plans”.

Kampungs. Giok Ling Ooi and Kai Hong Phua, in Urbanization and Slum Formation, argue that, “city governments have to first recognize and then act to establish the link that is crucial between economic development, urban growth, and housing. This is the agendum that has been largely neglected by city and national governments that have been narrowly focused on economic growth with the consequent proliferation of slum formation as a housing solution”.

Basically, slum formation is a product of having no housing solution. As governor I would embark on creating large scale low income housing unit projects. Not high rise cinder block ghettos but real communities based on the needs of the community and with access to community services.

As governor all evictions would cease unless the occupants of an area are imminently threatened with a health crisis or natural catastrophe. People would not be moved until they had a place to move to and in the interim a full spectrum of social services would be provided which would include clean drinking water, sanitation, education, and job training.

I would reinitiate a kampung restructuring policy, formerly a successful symbol of social welfare, but which now has virtually stopped to function.

In conjunction with this I would enforce a moratorium on the building of malls and require that all housing projects include affordable low income units.

Kampungs give Jakarta a particular character and should retain their own spirit of local space. It is this spirit through which a real transformation of Jakartan culture can occur.

This has always been so.

Recycling. A report from Indonesia: The Economics of Water and Waste titled Jakarta, Indonesia: The Economics of Water and Waste states that, “Jakarta has an extensive recycling system. No sooner has solid waste left the household than scavengers begin to pore through it. These are people with bags or carts who seek a living by collecting discarded items that can be recycled or reused. Also, until recently, officials considered scavengers to be urban undesirables. They collect not only items that are recycled in industrialized countries, such as paper, plastic, glass, and metals, but also discarded household durable goods, wood, bone, sawdust, boxes, and cigarette butts”.

As governor I would place a redemption tax on all plastic bags, bottles, and aluminum cans. I would make street garbage worth enough money as to not have it simply discarded.

And here’s what can be done with it. XSProject as they state on their site “buys plastic consumer waste from Jakarta’s trash pickers at well above market price, providing them with much-needed extra income. Working together with other foundations and small cottage industries, the waste is then transformed into fun-ctional accessories that make a strong environmental and social statement”.

As governor I would promote and support these small scale projects of this type. And the scavengers of Jakarta are true heros in my world. In addition there is real potential for turning the greenwaste into biodiesel, for mining the Bekasi landfill, and for letting nothing go to waste.

Greenspace. The best out of the box thinking I have seen is from the RWIEN UNIVERSE blog. These are the people I want in my governement.

In their Septemeber 24, 2007 post there is an interview with Marco Kusumawijaya, architect and greenspace advocate. “Marco Kusumawijaya’s name is often followed by a long list of professional identifiers-architect, chairman of the Jakarta Arts Council, urban planner and activist, to name a few. He has made a name for himself defending Indonesia’s urban public spaces through his books-Kota Rumah Kita (The City as Our Home, 2006) and Jakarta Metropolis Tunggang Langgang (The Scrambling Jakarta Metropolis, 2004) and by introducing the Green Map movement to Indonesia’s cities”.

Kusumawijaya states in the interview that “from a sustainable development perspective; sustainable development must be able to change humankind and the different sources of humankind’s problems… Sustainable development must be able to change patterns of consumption and production; this to me is what city residents and the government are unaware of. The issue of green open spaces is perhaps one of the smaller problems; the big problem is how to change the pattern of consumption and production. (To implement) a pattern of consumption that produces as little waste as possible, as well as a pattern of production that produces as little waste as possible, or the reusing of waste as much as possible-that’s the essence of sustainable development. …”sustainable development is not only about physical development, it is also about social and economic issues. Green open spaces fulfil the role of social-cultural space The point is sustainable development implies changes in consumption and production patterns as well as in behaviour”. 

The Internet. Myrlyna Lim, has written in Cyber-Urban Activism and the Political change in Indonesia that the “the ability of Internet technology to provide spaces for interpersonal dialogue has in many countries bolstered the potential for a more democratic public realm.

The cyber-civic spaces in the built environment have further generated a renaissance in the physical landscape of cities to provide social and cultural spaces in the built environment for interaction, debate, and political-cultural continuity and development…

…for democratization, the Internet has all the features that are suited to civil society and grassroots citizen action in a manner that is less easy for a small number of people or groups to control. These features include: one-to-one communication, low/affordable cost, ease of use, broad availability, and relative technological resistence to surveillence and censorship”.

The Internet has emerged as a potent economic and politcal tool where information is moved at the speed of light. And iformation is power. As Jakarta’s governor I would promote free broadband wireless access to the Internet. Every school class room would have a computer terminal. Internet techology would be as much a mandatory course as science and math.

My guiding principles are:

Democracy. A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly.

Transparency. The ability of ordinary citizens to hold government officials accountable for their actions. It is essential to the democratic process and allows concerned citizens to see openly into the activities of their government, rather than permitting these processes to be cloaked in secrecy.

There are few immidate fixes but there are answers and in some cases the answers have long been out there in great detail and availabe for the for the taking.

So, there is hope.

A former resident of Jakarta recently said this about hope, “hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and work for it, and to fight for it… hope is the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us… by those who are not content to settle for the world as it is but who have the courage to remake the world as it should be”. His name is Barack Obama.