Jakarta (urban stereoscopy)

Lobby: Gran Melia Jakarta

Stereoscopy: Stereoscopy consists of two simultaneous space-based observations.

Or:

“The simultaneity of virtual and real environments” (from “Perpetuating Cities: Excepting Globalization and the Southeast Asia Supplement”, Bishop, Phillips, and Yeo, in : Post Colonialism: Southeast Asian Cities and Global Processes, Routledge, London, 2003.)

The Magical Misery Tour is waiting to take you away, waiting to take you away, take you away…

Photo: The Jakarta Post 7/22/09

Your bus awaits. All aboard.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Today our tour takes us to Kunciran subdistrict, Tangerang municipality where our senses will be ignited by the horrific scene of a second wife burning.

As seen here by The Jakarta Post:

First wife burns second wife in front of husband

Multa Fidrus , The Jakarta Post , Tangerang | Wed, 07/29/2009 9:13 PM | Jakarta

“Jenni, 35, a resident of Kunciran subdistrict, Tangerang municipality, has burned Euis, 25, her husband’s second wife, after their husband Sahroni, 40, asked them to live together with him in peace and share the house.

Tangerang Police chief Sr. Comr. Hamidin said Wednesday the incident started with Euis promising she would divorce Sahroni after entrusting her baby to Jenni.

“But later Euis came to Jenny and asked for her baby back,” Hamidin said.

The two argued and Jenni took a jerrycan of gasoline, poured it onto Euis’s body and set her on fire.

Jenni then rushed to the police station with the baby to turn herself in. Euis was taken to hospital with 90 percent of her body burnt.”

Then we are off to The Gran Melia Jakarta for an early lunch.

Timeless Luxury with an Avant-Garde Flair

Discover the Bold New Shade of Luxury.

As you must know the

“Gran Meliá Jakarta hotel is a stimulus of exoticism and mystery; imbued by the warmth and passion of South East Asia. A dramatic structure, towering over the community of Kuningan, looking out to Jakarta’s elaborate skyline.

The luxury hotel’s unique, swerving architecture is coated in a distinct azure that seemingly drifts into the clouds. Within, Gran Meliá Jakarta hotel broadcasts a similar and enchanting aesthetic, communicating the spirit and vitality of Indonesian culture with grand, cascading ceilings, and evocative décor.

Situated at the heart of Jakarta’s exclusive diplomatic and business district, the hotel is in exact vicinity to the city’s premier shopping malls, attractions, and the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

Gran Meliá Jakarta’s world-renowned restaurants and bars, event facilities, spa, and tiered accommodations are fashioned by a discriminating auteur and showcased as a bold new expression of luxury.”

Lunch is served. We certainly hope that you bring a hearty appetite. You will need it.

We will then continue our tour to the site of the St. Moritz. A self-contained city within a city.

Come to Jakarta and not see it at all.

In fact come and never leave as all your wishes, desires, and needs can be serviced in one cradle to the grave stop.

St. Moritz will become to a global city in Asia

” Mochtar’s first grand son, Michael Riyadi will leading the projet of St. Moritz Penthouse and Residences in this year projects, a multi billion dollar projects to establish a new business district in Puri Kembangan, West Jakarta.

St. Moritz will have 17 buildings that will provide 11 centers in one area, including office buildings, apartments, schools, a hotel, a hospital and a mall.

This project will be a blast in the future and will help people to cut commuting time in Jakarta. The office building has 65 floors and will be the tallest in Indonesia.

The 135-hectare land plot is designed to be a self-sustaining business district with a block concept. We also want the new business district to be a global city, competing not with other developers, but with other cities in Southeast Asia.

This projects will become to a global city in Asia and also have a competitive advantage. Property prices in Jakarta are among the cheapest in the world.

According to Global Property Guide 2008, the average apartment price in Jakarta is US$1,068 per square meter while in Manila it is $1,969. In Kuala Lumpur, it’s $1,400.”

Well, I bet you have never seen anything like it!

Oh, we’re not done yet! Not by a long shot.

Prepare yourselves now to see THE REAL JAKARTA!

As reported by CNN:

Slum tourism: Visitors see the ‘real’ Jakarta

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) — Hidden in the alleyways behind Jakarta’s fancy malls and in between the high-rise apartment buildings is what Ronny Poluan, a former film maker, calls the “real Jakarta.”

It is not far from the glitz and glam that dominates the capital’s skyline, yet it is a side of the city that few foreigners ever see.

“I want them to (have an) authentic view,” Poluan, who runs “Jakarta Hidden Tours,” said as he took a group of Australians through the winding maze of a central Jakarta slum.

“I’m running out of rice,” an old lady mumbles in the doorway of her tiny dark home as the group passes by.

Further along, little girls push their faces into wire fencing, while another group of children draw 36-year-old Daniel Knott into a game of cards. Knott, a volunteer for various NGOs, and his wife, who works for AUSAID, live in Jakarta and have been to the slums before. But it is the first time their friends, Kerri Bell and her husband Phil Paschke, have been to Indonesia.

Knott said he felt it was important to bring the visiting couple here.

“I think Jakarta is a city of contrasts,” he said. “There’s a lot of shopping malls and kitschy stuff, but it’s also a lot of normal people. And, it’s fun to come and hang out with the locals, actually.”

“It’s fantastic,” Kerri Bell said. “I’ve been in Asia once before and we didn’t want to just gloss over the surface and see all the things you can see in a western country. It feels to me much more like the real Jakarta, to see what drives it. To see that is so much more valuable than coming and lying on the beach.”

The tour first took them into a couple of cramped and sweltering soy bean cake and tofu factories — both staples in the Indonesian diet. Video Watch Arwa Damon tour through the slum »

The group remarked that there were few other cities where foreigners can wander around the slums, and not just feel safe but welcomed — and that is what Poluan said these tours were all about.

“I want to see people meet people,” he said. “The other culture meet the other culture.”

“It’s a pretty big eye opener,” Paschke said. “It’s the first time I have left Australia, so yes, it’s completely different.”

Poluan ushered the group into a covered market where you can find just about anything. For the group, it was a bombardment of the senses.

“I love seeing them,” fish seller Rokayah said, laughing. “They are handsome and they are rich. It is rare for me to see foreigners here at the traditional market, and I like talking to them, but I don’t understand English.”

The tour costs around $34 per person. Poluan keeps about half of the money for himself and his NGO, INTERKULTUR. The other half goes to the community.

Critics, however, said that this type of direct cash aid was counter-productive. They said the tours were demeaning, exploited the poor, and taught them to be dependent on the handouts of others.

“These poor people, we have to educate them,” said Wardah Hafidz, coordinator of the Urban Poor Consortium. “We have to tell them that it’s not God’s will that they are poor, that they also have to fight for themselves. They can’t depend on other people forever.”

This type of criticism angers and frustrates Poluan, who said his tours were about raising awareness on both sides. In the last month, he has also started a microfinance scheme.

More importantly though, he said, were the initiatives that he hoped his tours would jumpstart.

“They (the foreigners) usually think about how to help, to educate,” he said. “They come back again, bring books. I try to make a pushcart library for the children.”

He said his tours were also about educating foreigners on real issues facing the country.

The group weaved its way to the city’s train tracks, only barely visible amid the garbage and squalor.

It is the site of a constant battle between the track dwellers and the government, which says that living there is illegal and dangerous. Government evictions and the destruction of the feeble structures, usually just bits of plastic tarp and wood, are fairly commonplace.

“I am used to it,” shrugged 80-year-old Indarjo.

He has lived like this for five decades, making his living as a scavenger. He said he has been forced to move over 200 times.

He invited the group into his home, and explained that when it rains, he just pulls the flap over.

“I feel that I am equal to them. I treat them as my guests,” he said. “I believe that they would do the same for me.”

The visitors were dumbstruck, the impact of what they were seeing, they say, was hard to put into words.

It was a sobering but educational look at Indonesia, where some 40 million people live below the poverty line.

“It’s pretty confronting,” Paschke said. “The things you complain about at home don’t seem too significant.”

“It’s hard to see something like this and just go home to normal life,” his wife, Bell, added as the couple stood in the middle of the tracks. “It makes me motivated to look at the local community and things that we can help out with at home.”

Yes, see Jakarta now in its unreal realness. Really.

At the end of the day we will whisk you back aboard our open air bus to the JW Marriott or Ritz Carlton. As you prefer.

They’ve just reopened. It’s business as usual.

Next up, high tea at Jakartass Towers where we will converse  at length on the subject of what is real and what is not.

Jakarta (An Insane Administration and Insanitary Town)

Jakarta, 2008

Acutally that is Batavia or no, it’s Jakarta, or no it’s Batavia…

Sometimes it is hard to tell with out having to consult a calendar to see which century I’m in.

File this in Batavia trivia I suppose…

I finally have obtained a copy of Leonard Blusse’s essay on Batavia: “An Insane Administration and Insanitary Town: The Dutch East India Company and Batavia 1619-1799″ published in Colonial Cities: Essays on Urbanism in a Colonial Context, 1985, by Martinus Nijhoff. The essay is full of wonderful gems (as is the rest of the book)… of which here are a particular few regarding Jakarta… err, I mean, Batavia.

“These impressionistic sketches may suffice to illustrate that at the turn of the nineteenth century a fundamental change had taken place in the morphology of Batavia. Almost as a snake sheading its skin, the town population had crept out of the walls and the stately buildings that had housed it for almost two centuries, and started a new life about ten kilometers inland in a garden city with a totally different outlay. In this chapter I would like to focus in depth on the origins and causes of the insalubrious conditions that forced the Dutch during the government of Marshall Daendels to make a leap for survival to Weltevreden”.

What were the causes of the process that turned the ‘Queen of the East’ into the ‘Graveyard of the East’? This question has only been partly and unsatisfactorily answered. Medical specialists of the past stressed in their analysis the bad climate of the city, the low, hanging, poisonous mists, the polluted canals and of course the main object of their interest: exotic diseases with pregnant names like ‘remitterende rotkoorsen’ (intermittent rotting fevers), ‘roode loop’ (red diarrhoea), ‘febres ardentes’, malignae et putridae’ and ‘mort de chien’.”

[I translate 'febres ardentes' as 'strong fever', ' malignae et putridae' is something like 'evil boils with stinging pain', and, of course, 'mort de chien' is the dreaded 'Chinese death' which I suppose you may or may not actually die from or if you caught it maybe you wish you had. ]

Blusse has some interesting things to say about the Mookervaart Canal [Kali Besar] as well. The thing was poorly built for one, it screwed up the natural flow of the rivers it crossed, most notably the Angke, it silted in and people threw their muck and trash into it which they called ‘f’olia novi horas’ which means ‘nine o’clock flowers’ because that was the time it was allowed by the town regulations when you could throw your horse manure into the canal (and I assume anything else under the cover of dark).

There were also a group of people called the ‘Modder-Javanen’ (the mud-Javanese) who hailed from Ciredon and whose job it was to once a year come to divest the canals of the “redundant mud”. Imgaine THAT employment! Blusse notes that “eventually this turned out to be an endless task, which only resulted in the certain death of the poor courvee labourers” and the cleaning was given up. The Mookervaart finally was a source of such nasty pestilence that the Dutch literally ran for the lives out of the old city.

If you do not think that they REALLY ran then think again. The nickname the Dutch had for the hospital in Batavia was De Moordkuil (the death pit).

Blusse’s other point, and this one is not only interesting but also well worth pondering vis-a-vis modern Jakarta, is that what really screwed up Batavia was the deforestation and the growing of sugarcane in the ‘hinterlands’ or as the Dutch called it the ‘Ommelanden’ of Batavia. Converting the native forests into sugarcane plantations induced an ecological disaster in the entire surrounding area from which the city did not fully recover until the sugar commodity crash in the late 1770s. Ironically this crash left a lot of angry and unemployed workers (read: slaves) to have to fend for themselves.

Later the VOC would run Batavia by edict. They were a kind of Dutch MUI, if you will. “The so-called ‘Reglement ter beteugeling van Pract en Praal’ (Regulations to check pomp and magnificence) in which was precribed to the Batavian population in 124 articles exactly what kinds of diamonds, clothes, hats they were to wear, how many slaves were allowed to follow them in the street, etc., according to rank and status” and other high matters of the sort…

Such was the VOCs psychosis that they wrote regarding their policy of adminstration that “We must remain the masters of the enterprise, even if it means the disposal of the Batavian citizenry’.

They damn near succeeded.

There is also in the essay examples of VOC corruption, embezzlment, blackmarkets, and general running-a-amok. The Dutch fear of the local “native”, either because they thought their throats would be slit while they slept or because they regarded the locals as a source of contagion, became so pronounced that they booted them out of the town. The locals then responded by forming their own “kampungs” and so there you have it.

Here is colonialism at its finest.

Hello Jakarta! There are some lesson to be learned here. For one don’t build more suburbs over the Jakarta aquifer.

Also good reason to check out the Book of the Week.

In the Nature of Cities Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism edited by Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika, Erik Swyngedouw

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Jakarta (multipoliCity metrochaotic)

A Saturday night dinner dance in Bandung’s fasionable Homann Hotel, ca. 1920. From: Java: Indonesia, Periplus Adventure Guides, Edited by Eric Oey, 1997.  Photo: Antiquariaat Acanthus   (scanned image)

Can you see them? They are there on the left and right, way in the back, lined up near the walls. Nearly invisible. Servants and shadows to the folks having such a grand time at the Homann Hotel.  Or it could very well be at the fashionable Harmonie Club, “the main cultural institution of high European society” of Batavia close on to the Konigsplein, a public square nearly a square kilometer in extent. “A European enclave, a spacious civic center ringed by two churches, the city’s two leading hotels (Des Indies and Der Nederlander), and the the town theater (Schouwberg).”  Where I am also sure many servants and shadows also tread. Though the Harmonie is no longer the Konigsplein remains a central feature of Jakarta. It is, of course, Merdeka Sqaure.

During my soon to end vacation I have conducted a sort of discourse with myself and Jakarta. I just finished reading Planning the Megcity, Jakarta in the Twentieth Century, Routledge, 2008. NY, by Dr. Christopher Silver, Dean of the College of Design, Construction and Planning and professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at (of all places) the University of Florida, Gainesville. This seems to me a long way from Jakarta but Dr. Silver does have reliable and personal experience with the city and he tells a good story – there is historical background but his main focus is on the “planning” of Jakarta. His book takes a “planner’s eye view”, if you will.

So, to answer the question I posed to myself and my fellow traveller bloggers: Is Jakarta a city?” I say yes. In its current configuration of metrochaos it is a multipoliCity.

I will return to Dr. Silver’s book in a moment to pause to consider some definitions of just what a city is.  I will begin to seconding Marissa Duma’s astute note regarding  density of population as defining characteristic. It is a good place to start. (see the post: Jakarta (apa?) )

Phil Hubbard in his book City cites R. Davis who describes cities as ‘concentrations of many people located close together for residential and productive purposes’ and Saunders who points out that ‘cities are places where large numbers of people live and work’. Simply enough. But as Hubbard notes ‘the city is many things: a spatial location, a political entity, as administrative unit, a place of work and play, a collection of dreams and nightmares, a mesh of social relations, an agglomeration of economic activity…”  A city is everyday life.  But as Andy Merrfield asks in Metromarxism in the chaper on Henri Lefebvre: “Is the city a “technical object” or an “aesthetic object”?” And like Lefebvre I ask how is the “space” of urban Jakarta “produced”? To what ends? I will have more to say regarding this  but for now lets take a look at a few  more definitions and some numbers from  demographia via wikipedia: List of Urban Areas by Population. (note: there is also a link to additonal demographia information in the right sidebar under ‘Urban Issues’.

“Demographia defines an urban area (urbanized area agglomeration or urban centre) as a continuously built up landmass of urban development containing a high population density, without regard for administrative boundaries (i.e. municipality, city or commune) or a labor market (i.e. metropolitan area).”

 Here are the current top three urban areas (the numbers are 2008 estimates so they are as good as ‘hot off the press’):

Tokyo – Yokohama, Japan:    34,400,000

Jakarta, Indonesia:   21,800,000

New York City, United States:  20,090,000

There is not even a hint of the qualitative differences between Tokyo, New York, and Jakarta of which there are many. There are only the numbers and numbers and density of population Jakarta does have. It’s number two in urban population extent  (for now).

City, megacity, conurbation, megalopolis, multipoliCity. This is the urban age. Now is the urban century. Definitions merge and mingle. And as far a numbers go Jakarta meets the test.

Back to Dr. Silver and the “planner’s eye view”:  Here is Batavia of 1905.

“The spatial distribution of population within Batavia underscored the traditionally deep social divisions based on race, class, and ethnicity. In turn this reflected the uneven division of power in the colonial capital. In 1905, the European community represented just 9 per cent of the total population but occupied 50 per cent of the residential land, while the native, which made up 71 per cent of the population of Batavia’s residents, crowded onto just 20 per cent of the city’s land. That left the Chinese (and Arabs and Indians), who constituted 20 per cent of the population and occupied a more generous 30 per cent of the land.” /38

Yes, Jakarta is a city but I am going to argue that it is NOT an Indonesian city. Jakarta has had too long a history as Batavia. Its historical and material development are at heart colonial and the implications of this are significant.  This is the thesis I will explore  in further posts.

 

Note: Both Dr. Silver’s book and Dr. Hubbard’s book were posted as “Book of the Week” a new and transitive feature of this blog.  Another reason to visit.

 

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Jakarta (apa?)

 Jakarta, 2008

 

Is Jakarta a city?

In the conclusion to the chapter titled The Cultural Construction of Malay Cities in Southeast Asian Urbanism by Evers and Korff is the following comment regarding Jakarta:

“Modern Jakarta is, to paraphrase Oswald Spengler, “a very large settlement but, nevertheless, not a city”.”

The context of this statement is regarding the cultural construction of urban space and urban traditions in Indonesia based on the kraton or istana and the mosque.

As Evers and Korff conclude it is noted that these “…urban traditions seem to have lost their importance. Colonialism, immigration, and lately, integration into a world economy and globalization certainly implied an increased homogenization of the morphology of the cities. The sky-line of Bangkok, Manila,  Jakarta and Singapore look quite similar to the postmodernist high-rise architecture, which hides the temples, palaces, and masjids. However, the traditional concepts of the city still play a role as they define specific views of urbanism, specific contested genii loci  within the city that quite often form the “hot” spots of urban conflicts. These conflicts associated with kampung demolition, or, urban re-construction in general. For the understanding of present-day urbanism in Southeast Asia, these concepts have to be taken into consideration.”

However,  whether or not Jakarta is a city is still a very intriguing question. And if Jakarta is not a city then what is it? If Jakarta is simply “a very large settlement” then what does that mean?

Post updated 11/22/2008

Is Jakarta a city?

I decided to ask around to a few folks who write about Jakarta. I will continue to update this post as I receive comments. And, of course, I thank all for their time and trouble regarding my question.

Below are some of the replies to date:

aroengbinang

Interesting…
Googling with keywords “define: city”, and the answer of yes, based on that simple definition, is there.

The not so simple answer is a No. Yogya is certainly a city, but Jakarta is more of a huge crowd where most of its inhabitants are still strongly attached to the place where they originally came from.

 

Jakartass

Of course Jakarta is a city.

Cities generally spread out from an original core to engulf surrounding villages, all of which have some attachment to the core, generally for trading purposes. Jakarta remains a collection of kampung, e.g. Kampungs Melayu and Rambutan. This is much like London with its collection of villages, e.g. Hampstead and Blackheath, and the (village) Greens of Chiswick and Islington.

 

Lightbeamers MD

Yes, obviously Jakarta is a city. It has the infrastructure, dynamics, and density of a city. It has the economics, transportation and utilities of a city. And most of all, it has the diversity of a city.

However, if you asked if it’s an ideal city, then the answer would be different; an ideal city would involve me riding a bike to office and not being worried of getting hit by a car, robbed by a street thug, or inhaling toxic emission in the air.

Something you and your survey respondents might like:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/01/super-green-cit.html

http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/11/third-world-slums-biz-cx_21cities_ee_0611slums.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEiy4zepuVE

 

Indonesia’s Urban Studies

Hi Thomas,

It’s nice to hear from you again. I learned that your blog now is quite
informative. A lot of interesting posts. Well done!

In response to your question, below is my two cents:

Jakarta is a city, but it is not an Indonesian city. As the capital of
Indonesia, Jakarta can’t represent the heart of Indonesia. Jakarta has
been globalized. There are many Indonesian characters that have been
diminishing and they are replaced by other characters from around the
world. That’s the consequence of a globalized world.

As you mentioned in your post, the Indonesian cultural construction and
urban tradition such as istana and mosques have become less important than
newly skyscrapers in many parts of Jakarta. Nevertheless, a few parts of
Jakarta, i.e. kawasan Kota Lama, have been revitalized and Jakarta is
attempting to preserve its historical buildings. This area has been
publicized by the Jakarta’s tourism bureau to attract more tourists to
visit Jakarta. That’s certainly a good thing for Jakarta, but it could
even better if more Indonesian characters in Jakarta can be revitalized
and preserved for many generations to come!

Best,
Deden

 

Igor Firdauzi
http://wandererjourney.blogspot.com/ 

now, i understand your question!

I didnt check my blog feeds before i answer your question
, but my my answer will be the same and quite legal definition

jakarta is a city, capital city of indonesia and because of that jakarta also a province

now, if you put sociology, anthropology, urban and social study, public facility in the picture, the answer will vary

cheers

Rob
http://therabexperience.blogspot.com/ 

It is an interesting question on a number of levels.

I agree that within the most accepted definitions of a city, then Jakarta is rightfully to be classed as a city.

It is bigger than a village. I would agree with J that in many ways Jakarta started out as a village that has gradually absorbed surrounding villages. However, I was always led to believe that the various names of those villages such as Kampung Melayu, Kampung Bali, Kampung Rambutan and the like reflected the origin of many of the inhabitants of the locale or a physical feature of the place.

However, the idea that you have Jabotabek and a now much longer abbreviation that includes other satellite cities that have been linked by the urban sprawl that is Jakarta begs the question of what is the word that best describes this if it is not “city”. That said, I think it is more than just a very large settlement.

I was interested in Deden’s comments that Jakarta is not an Indonesian city because it has been globalized. I would never have thought about the idea. for example, of saying that Sydney, Canberra, or Melbourne were not Australian cities because they have been globalized or that they could not represent the “heart” of Australia.

I tend to agree with Lightbeamers MD on the idea of Jakarta not being an ideal city. I would include general cleanliness and state of repair of roads footpaths and the like.

I don’t know this contributes anything to the discussion.

The short and sweet answer is that I think Jakarta is a city.

Jakartass

Greetings all.

I’m not a teacher or student of urban studies, but as I’m a city person, a Londoner and now a resident of Jakarta for 20+ years, may I disagree with you Deden.

Jakarta is most definitely an Indonesian city, a reflection of the many ethnic groups resident here who, as in cities all over the world, tend to congregate with group members. Thus there are predominantly Chinese areas, and, for example, clusters of Bugis and Batak. There are also the specific Betawi areas. I would suggest there fore that Jakarta does represent the ‘heart’ of Indonesia. For you, Deden, the heart of Indonesia is probably somewhere in Central Java - I’m just guessing, but I know from your name that you’re not from Sumatra.

Where I do agree with you, is that more of Jakarta’s ‘ history’ should have been preserved.

 

Roy

Jakarta is very much an Indonesian city. It is not so much an Indonesian city because it has plenty of mosques and kaki limas, but because of its form: it is a sprawled city, a desakota, and therefore unlike cities like my hometown Amsterdam, which is built according to the logic of concentric circles with the oldest part in the center. And I don’t see much in preservation of old buildings (mostly Dutch anyway), either they become death objects for tourists (what is the name of that museum in front of Batavia cafe? with a very strange collection) or they become commercialized (the former kantor imigrasi is since last monday offcially the Buddha Bar, owned by Sutoyoso’s daughter and opened by Fauzi Bowo). I see more in the creation of more public space (in its political sense) to keep this sprawled city together (spatially as well as politically), thus more public transportation, less private car ownership, more parks (which are not to be fenced), a public funded theater for dance and music performances, a public funded modern art museum, etc.

salam,

Roy 
http://fatumbrutum.blogspot.com/
http://parahyanganphilosophy.blogspot.com/
 

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Jakarta (why I am optimistic)

Jakarta, 2008

The problems we face are dire and it is easy to mark them all out in broad strokes. That there will be trouble ahead I have no doubt. Yet, in these times, the opportunity to make the positive fundamental changes which we need to move forward has never been so clear and the way so open. We are not on the verge of a global Dark Age.

From: Focus on the Global South

10/23/2008

The Global Economic Crisis: An Historic Opportunity for Transformation

 
“An initial response from individuals, social movements and non-governmental Organisations in support of a transitional programme for radical economic transformation Beijing, 15 October 2008

Preamble
Taking advantage of the opportunity of so many people from movements gathering in Beijing during the Asia-Europe People’s Forum, the Transnational Institute and Focus on the Global South convened informal nightly meetings between 13 and 15 October 2008. We took stock of the meaning of the unfolding global economic crisis and the opportunity it presents for us to put into the public domain some of the inspiring and feasible alternatives many of us have been working on for decades. This statement represents the collective outcome of our Beijing nights. We, the initial signatories, mean this to be a contribution towards efforts to formulate proposals around which our movements can organise as the basis for a radically different kind of political and economic order. Please sign on to this statement at http://casinocrash.org/?p=235#comment-345.

The Crisis
The global financial system is unravelling at great speed. This is happening in the midst of a multiplicity of crises in relation to food, climate and energy. It severely weakens the power of the US and the EU, and the global institutions they dominate, particularly the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. Not only is the legitimacy of the neo-liberal paradigm in question, but the very future of capitalism itself.

Such is the chaos in the global financial system that Northern governments have resorted to measures progressive movements have advocated for years, such as nationalisation of banks. These moves are intended, however, as short-term stabilisation measures and once the storm clears, they are likely to return the banks to the private sector. We have a short window of opportunity to mobilise so that they are not.

The challenge and the opportunity
We are entering uncharted terrain with this conjuncture of profound crises – the fall out from the financial crisis will be severe. People are being thrown into a deep sense of insecurity; misery and hardship will increase for many poorer people everywhere. We should not cede this moment to fascist, right wing populist, xenophobic groups, who will surely try to take advantage of people’s fear and anger for reactionary ends.

Powerful movements against neo-liberalism have been built over many decades. This will grow as critical coverage of the crisis enlightens more people, who are already angry at public funds being diverted to pay for problems they are not responsible for creating, and already concerned about the ecological crisis and rising prices – especially of food and energy. The movements will grow further as recession starts to bite and economies start sinking into depression.

There is a new openness to alternatives. To capture people’s attention and support, they must be practical and immediately feasible. We have convincing alternatives that are already underway, and we have many other good ideas attempted in the past, but defeated. Our alternatives put the well-being of people and the planet at their centre. For this, democratic control over financial and economic institutions are required. This is the “red thread” connecting up the proposals presented below. …> go to article

Conclusion

These are all practical, common sense proposals. Some are initiatives already underway and demonstrably feasible. Their successes need to be publicised and popularised so as to inspire reproduction. Others are unlikely to be implemented on their objective merits alone. Political will is required. By implication, therefore, every proposal is a call to action.

We have written what we see as a living document to be developed and enriched by us all. Please sign on to this statement at the bottom of the page.

A future occasion to come together to work on the actions needed to make these ideas and others a reality will be the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil at the end of January 2009.

We have the experience and the ideas – let’s meet the challenge of the present ruling disorder and keep the momentum towards an alternative rolling!!”

You can sign on to support this statement here: The global economic crisis: An historic opportunity for transformation

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Jakarta (State of The World’s Cities)

 

Depok, 2008

The United Nations UN-Habitat released their most current (2008-09) “state of the world’s city” report today. I would argue that much of the article announcing the release of the report could be called “Why the poor matter”.

While Jakarta is not specifically mentioned in the article much of what is said here can certainly be applied there. If you know Jakarta you will be familiar with the points which follow. I have placed in bold text those of interest.

United Nations Human Settlements Programme: London, 10/23//2008

“Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-HABITAT said that the crisis should be viewed as a “housing finance crisis” in which the poorest of poor were left to fend for themselves.

“Clearly you cannot have a harmonious society if people are not secure in their homes,” she told reporters at news conference to launch of the State of the World’s Cities 2008/2009 , a flagship report published every two years by the UN agency.

“The financial crisis we are facing today cannot be seen as an event — it is a process that has been building up over time and this process now has bust.” She said governments had to provide cheaper homes for those on lower incomes because the supply of affordable housing could not be left entirely to the market.

The UN-HABITAT said income distribution (measured through Gini coefficient levels) varies considerably among less-developed regions with the divide most noticeable in African and Latin American cities. In both regions, the gulf is often extreme compared to Europe and Asia, where urban inequality levels are relatively low.

South African cities top the list of the world’s most unqual cities, followed by Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico. Urban inequalities in this highly unequal region are not only increasing, but are becoming more entrenched, which suggests that failures in wealth distribution are largely the result of structural or systemic flaws.

Mrs. Tibaijuka said the proportion of people living in slum conditions in wealthy countries could rise because of the credit crunch. With 1 billion people already living in slums at the dawn of the new urban era, the report warned of unrest should governments fail to tackle the urban poverty crisis more seriously.

“I would not be surprised that, if we did another global survey on people living in slum conditions without security of tenure, this number will have increased in developed countries as a result of this crisis,” she said referring to a recipe for riots and social upheaval to which the financial turmoil might lead.

“I am not surprised that world leaders are now seizing on the matter because without leadership, without governance, it is a clear test of social tensions,” she said.”

Not so harmonious cities

In many cities around the world, wealth and poverty coexist in close proximity: rich, well-serviced neighbourhoods and gated residential communities are often situated near dense inner-city or peri-urban slum communities that lack even the most basic of services. Here the expert in charge of UN-HABITAT’s State of the World’s Cities report, Eduardo Lopez Moreno, explains the report’s latest research on a divide so prominently marked by electrified fences and high walls often patrolled by armed private security companies with killer dogs.

Income distribution (measured through Gini coefficient levels) varies considerably among less-developed regions with the divide most noticeable in African and Latin American cities. In both regions, the gulf is often extreme compared to Europe and Asia, where urban inequality levels are relatively low.

South African cities are the most unequal in the world, followed by Brazil.
Latin American and Caribbean cities are among the most unequal in the world, with Brazilian and Colombian cities topping the list, closely followed by some cities in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico. Urban inequalities in this highly unequal region are not only increasing, but are becoming more entrenched, which suggests that failures in wealth distribution are largely the result of structural or systemic flaws.

And all too often it is not the actual degrees of inequality that matter, but the perceptions of it. And nothing defines that perception better perhaps than the example of a sign with a skull and cross bones carrying the warning “armed reaction” on a high electrified fence cocooning a suburban Johannesburg home.

When gross inequalities are associated with unjust systems that perpetuate poverty, curb upward mobility and exclude the majority, you have a formula for trouble. Put another way: when inequalities are perceived as the result of unfair processes or the unequal distribution of opportunities, people are less likely to accept them. Indeed such perceptions can nurture high crime rates, social unrest or even conflict.

There is no doubt that social unrest and insecurity reduce incentives for investment and force governments to increase the amount of public resources devoted to internal security – resources that might have otherwise been spent on more productive sectors of the economy or on social services and infrastructure.

Inequalities take various forms, ranging from different levels of human capabilities and opportunities, participation in political life, consumption, and income, to disparities in living standards and access to resources, basic services and utilities. Although the traditional causes of inequality – such as spatial segregation, unequal access to education and control of resources and labour markets – have persisted, new causes of inequality have emerged. These include inequalities in access to communication technologies and skills, among others.

“Digital exclusion”, for instance, has exacerbated inequalities within sub-Saharan Africa and resulted in the further marginalization of the region within a globalizing economy.

A society simply cannot claim to be harmonious if large portions of its population are deprived of basic needs while others live in opulence. A city cannot be harmonious if some groups concentrate resources and opportunities while others remain impoverished and deprived. Income inequalities not only
threaten the harmony of cities, but also put the harmony and stability of countries at risk, as they create social and political fractures within society that threaten to develop into social unrest or full-blown conflicts. An excessive distributive polarization of income and wealth challenges social cohesion
in many parts of the world, and the demands for narrowing social distance are in fact demands for social inclusion, social mobility and equal opportunities; in short they are demands for human dignity.

In Africa, urban income inequalities are highest in Southern Africa. South Africa stands out as a country that has yet to break out of an economic and political model that concentrates resources, although the adoption of redistributive strategies and policies in recent years have reduced inequalities slightly.

Unfortunately, rising economic growth rates in several African countries have not reduced income or consumption disparities. Instead, urban inequalities in many African cities, including Maputo, Nairobi and Abidjan, remain high as wealth becomes more concentrated. In general, urban income inequalities in African countries tend to be higher than rural income inequalities, and Northern African cities tend to be more equal than sub-Saharan African cities.

In Asia, on the other hand, cities tend to be more equal than cities in other parts of the developing world, although levels of urban inequality have risen or remain high in some cities. These include Hong Kong, New Delhi, Ho Chi Minh City, Davao and Colombo.

Cities in China tend to be more equal than other Asian cities, with Beijing being among the most equal city in the region, although some Chinese cities, such as Shenzhen, are experiencing relatively high inequality levels similar to those of Bangkok and Manila. China’s booming economy has also led to rural-urban and regional disparities, with populations living in cities located on the eastern part of the country enjoying significantly higher per capita incomes than rural populations living in remote western parts of the country.

In Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Indonesia, levels of urban inequality are generally low and are comparable to many cities in Europe, Canada and Australia, even through urban poverty is much greater in the former.

However, recent analyses suggest that India will experience rising levels of urban inequality in the future as a result of liberalization and industrialization policies coupled with lack of adequate investment in provision of public goods to the most vulnerable populations.

From many countries around the worlds, the evidence suggests that the benefits of economic growth are not realized in societies experiencing extremely high levels of inequality and poverty. Societies that have low levels of inequality are more effective in reducing poverty levels than those that are highly unequal.

Inequalities also have a dampening effect on economic efficiency as they raise the cost of redistribution and affect the allocation of resources for investment.

Levels of inequality can be controlled or reduced by forward-looking mitigation efforts on the part of governments. UN-HABITAT analysis of urban inequalities in 28 developing countries indicates that since the 1980s, nearly half of these countries managed to reduce levels of urban inequality while enjoying positive economic growth.

Malaysia, for instance, has been steadily reducing levels of urban inequality since the early 1970s through the implementation of pro-poor policies and through human resources and skills development. Similarly, Indonesia’s Growth, Stability and Equity programme has ensured that income distribution and poverty alleviation are integral components of economic growth and development.

Policies promoting equity in Rwanda have also ensured that the high economic growth rates that the country is currently experiencing do not increase inequality levels. These countries have shown that it is possible to grow economically without increasing inequality levels, and that reduction of inequalities is, in fact, a pro-growth strategy.”

 

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Jakarta (Sustainable Cities)

Jakarta, 2008 (view from MONAS)

The Future of Cities: Population Growth and Urban Sustainability

The problem of population growth and it’s relation to urban sustainability is now an immediate issue of global concern. How the issues of urban “sustainability” are addressed; their meanings, methods, and outcomes have direct implications in the lives of more than half (and growing) of the world’s population. In 2007, it was announced that for the first time in human history half of the people living on the planet, some 3.3 billion, now live in cities (Science Daily). By 2030, the proportion of urban dwellers will increase to sixty percent, and by 2050, seventy-five percent; a total well exceeding 6 billion people (Burdett 10).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines sustainable as: 1. Being capable of being borne or endured; supportable, bearable; 2. Capable of being upheld or defended, maintainable; 3. Capable of being maintained at a certain rate or level. Hence: sustainability (327). The former Governor of Paraná, Brazil, writing in State of the World 2007, defines sustainability this way:

Sustainability is an equation between what is saved and what is wasted. Therefore, if sustainability = saving/wasting, when wasting is “zero”, sustainability tends to infinity. Waste is the most abundant source of energy (Stark xxi).

Global population demographics now lay claim to the 21st Century as an urban century. As Director of the London Design Museum, Eyan Sudjic writes:

The world is changing faster now than ever before. The dispossessed and the ambitious are flooding into cities swollen out of all recognition. Poor cities are struggling to cope. Rich cities are reconfiguring themselves at breakneck speed. China has created an industrial power house from what were fishing villages in the 1970s (Sudjic n. pag).

The imperative and immediate question in relation to this unprecedented urbanization is: are cities sustainable?

Currently, of the top ten metropolitan areas of the world only three cities distinguish themselves by their wealth: Tokyo, New York, and the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area. Seven cities of the top ten cities occur in developing nations that have high percentages of urbanization: Mexico City, Mumbai, Jakarta, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Shanghai, and Metro Manila. Of the top ten cities with the highest rates of urbanization all occur in developing nations with the highest rate occurring 10.58% in Beihai, China and the lowest rate of 4.29% in Cittagong, Bangladesh (City Mayors n. pag). In the 1990s urbanization throughout Indonesia was growing at an astonishing rate of 35.9% per year driven largely by urban economic development contributing nearly half of Indonesia’s National Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of which half was centered on the urban development of Jakarta alone (Firman 69). In developing nations cities are where the wealth resides; a significant pull factor in the process of urbanization now accounting for one million people per week moving to urban centers, resulting in the overcrowding and pollution that is commonly associated with large rapidly developing metropolitan cities (City Mayors n. pag).

In a survey of 151 city mayors conducted in 1997 by the United Nations Development Program the following urban problems were listed and ranked by percentage as follows: unemployment (52%), insufficient solid waste disposal (42%), urban poverty (41.6%), inadequate housing stock (33.8%), insufficient solid waste collection (30.9%), inadequate water/sanitation facilities (28.4%), inadequate public transportation (26.2%), traffic congestion (22.3%), poor health services (21.5%), insufficient civil society participation (20.9%), inadequate education services (18.9), air pollution (17.4), urban violence/crime/personal safety (13.5%), discrimination (women. ethnic, poor) (6.8%) (UNDP n. pag.). From the survey of the mayors the meaning of sustainability for their cities falls under quality of life issues, the balance between wealth and poverty, natural and human resources, the problem of air and water pollution, and the structure of geographic space and place (traffic, slums, and urban violence). In sum, writes Pie Ntiyankundiye, mayor of Bujumbura of Burundi, “All problems stem from poverty,” (UNDP n. pag.).

Perhaps no other global metropolitan area in the world exhibits the extremity of the problems outlined by the UNDP survey of mayors as does Jakarta, Indonesia. Jakarta is the capital, financial, and communication center of Indonesia. Designated its own province under the name of Daerah Khusus Ibu Kota (the area of the Mother City), it is the sixth largest metropolitan area in the world with an estimated population exceeding 17 million people (City Mayors n. pag.). Originally founded and built as Batavia by the Dutch in 1619, Jakarta was a colonial city until Indonesian independence in August, 1945, a period of 326 years. It took 329 years, from 1619, when Dutch slaves built Fort Batavia, to 1948, before the city’s population reached one million. In the period from 1900 to 2004, the city’s population grew by 112% to reach a population of thirteen million and more. This is one-third the time it took the city to reach its first one million residents. The rapid rise in population was such that, as Susan Abeyasekere writes:

The majority of new immigrants shared existing housing… …The state of affairs is described by the poet Ayip Rosidi, who arrived in Jakarta as a boy in 1951. Coming from Jatiwangi in West Java, he was appalled at the place where his uncle took him to live in. It was an alley in Galur sub-district, east of the Senen Market. The area was only a few years old, very muddy and full of huts with grass-thatched roof. Rosidi lived for several years in one of these huts backing onto a river lined with privies. Houses were built in an unbroken row; his row measured 33 feet by 23 feet, and contained 57 inhabitants. The boy shared a bed with two other men in a small room inhabited by five people. He later wrote: ‘It was entirely beyond anything I had imagined before actually coming to Djarkarta, and I felt nauseated. I had never, never thought I could live in such squalor. Yet little by little… I grew familiar with Djakarta housing, knowing that it was sometimes possible to live in a row of shacks, as we did, only after some stroke of good luck’ (Abeyasekere 174).

That is 57 people in an area measuring 33 feet by 23 feet or 759 square feet. Shared among 57 people this would allow each person a space of 3.5 feet by 4.5 feet. If you calculate the space needed for cooking, sleeping, or other household items this space is further reduced. Later, Abeyasekere quotes Rosidi in his attempt to come to terms with urban life:

…I felt that I’d been placed in a sickening cage, that I’d lost my roots, that I stood right in the middle of an international city’s whirling confusion, a city that opened itself to every current and never flinched away, a bustling activity without direction or purpose, a city of lies and tricks (Abeyasekere 195).

In 1951, as Abeyasekere notes, there were only 47 trucks and 600 handcarts available to collect rubbish. Of the trucks which were available about one in six was out of action and in need of repair. For the entire city there were only 60 men and 4 trucks employed to empty privies. In 1954, in a city of nearly two million people, there were only 84 public restrooms, none of which had water. If you wanted to ring up City Hall to complain there were only 8,204 telephone connections. The joke was that it was quicker to walk across town to deliver a message than use the telephone. (Abeyasekere 175 ).

No less today than in the 1950s are the urban problems of Jakarta as dire. 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 everyday phenomenons… 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 (Rukmana n.pag).

A byproduct of traffic is, of course, air pollution which Jakarta is especially notorious for. 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 is a major health hazard (Marshall 313).

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? Anton Lucas, writing in the October – December, 2004 issue of Inside Indonesia Anton Lucas reports 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 neighboring 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 (Lucas n. pag.).

There are those that argue that in the slums of despair are the slums of hope. That, as George Martine writes in State of the World Population: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth:

Urbanization – the increase in the urban share of total population – is inevitable, but it can also be positive. The current concentration of poverty, slum growth and social disruption in cities does paint a threatening picture: Yet no country in the industrial age has even achieved significant economic growth without urbanization. Cities concentrate poverty, but they also represent the best hope of escaping it (Martine 1).

The problems which confront cities under rapid urbanization have been defined; poverty and slum formation, sanitation and health, housing, traffic, air and water pollution, urban violence and public safety. The solutions to sustainability are many; employment, education, reproductive health, housing, human rights, sanitation, clean sources of water, urban agriculture, no car days, recycling, and economies of scale. Jakarta, for example, has a long history of urban planning and the laws and policies which would take the city in the direction of sustainability already exist. Perhaps the issue, as Gary Heinke suggests is one of political will, that “it is the ability or the inability of those in charge of cities to provide for the legitimate demands of their citizens” which make a city sustainable (Heinke 155). Sudjic states that:

Cities are made by an extraordinary mixture of do-gooders and bloody-minded obsessives, of cynical political operators and speculators. They are shaped by the unintended consequences of the greedy and the self-interested, the dedicated and the occasional visionary. The cities that work best are those that keep their options open, that allow the possibility of change. The ones that are stuck, overwhelmed by rigid, state-owned social housing, or by economic systems that offer the poor no way out of the slums are in trouble. A successful city is one that makes room for surprises. A city that has been trapped by too much gentrification, or too many shopping malls, will have trouble generating the spark that is essential to making a city that works (Sudjic n. pag).

One of those “bloody mined obsessives” was Indonesia’s first President, Soekarno. Trained as an architect at the Bandung Technical Institute, Soekarno had a particular obsessiveness about Jakarta. Abeyasekere quotes one of his speeches:

Comrades from Jakarta, let us build Jakarta into the greatest city possible. Great not just from a material point of view; great, not just because of its skyscrapers; great not just because it has boulevards and beautiful streets; great not just because it has beautiful monuments; great in every respect, even in the little houses of the workers of Jakarta there must be a sense of greatness… Give Jakarta an extraordinary place in the minds of the Indonesian people, because Jakarta belongs to the people of Jakarta. Jakarta belongs to the whole Indonesian people. More than that, Jakarta is becoming the beacon of the whole of mankind. Yes, the beacon of the New Emerging Forces (Abeyasekere 186).

Abeyasekere knew better than that. Her long detailed study of Jakarta led her to two conclusions which are directed at the very issue of sustainability. Yes, Jakarta belongs to the people of Indonesia, just as all cities belong to their citizens. It would prompt her to ask:

Is Jakarta the awful culmination of the nations past or does it in fact mirror Indonesia’s future? Through out its history its rulers have certainly intended the latter, but the real city has always taken its own perversely different path, making it to some extent a microcosm of the country at large – a forum for government policies at odds with people struggling to make a life of their own (Abeyasekere xvii).

And her conclusion was that “the central fallacy 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 country side of the majority poor (Abeyasekere 261).

Are cities sustainable?

Perhaps it is best to conclude with the novelist Haruki Murakami writing of Tokyo, Japan:

Eyes mark the shape of the city. Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature – or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city’s moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding (Murakami 3).

Works Cited

Abeyasekere, Susan. Jakarta: A History. Oxford University Press. Singapore. 1987.

Burdett, Ricky, and Devan Sudjic. The Endless City. Phaidon Press. Inc. London. 2008.

City Mayors. “The world’s fasest growing cities and urban areas from 2006 to 2020.                                 Urban area ranked 1 to 100.” City Mayors. 27 September 2008. <http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/urban_growth1.html>

Firman, Tommy. ” Indonesian cities under the ‘Krismon’: A great ‘urban crisis’ in

Southeast Asia” , Cities, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1999. pp. 69-82.

Heinke, Gary. W. “The Challenge of Urban Growth and Sustainable Development for Asian

Cities in the 21st Century.” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 44 (1997): 155-171.

Lucas, Anton. “Jakarta’s Rubbish Nightmare”. Inside Indonesia. October – December 2004.
September 27 2008 <http://www.insideindonesia.org/edit80/p13lucas.html>

Marshall, J. 2005. “Mega City, Mega Mess”. Nature. Vol. 437, September 2005, pp. 312-314

Martine, George. 2007. “State of the World Population: Unleashing the Potential of Urban

Growth.” United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). New York. 2007.

Murakami, Haruki. After Dark. Alfred A. Knopf. New York. 2007.

North Carolina State University. “Mayday 23: World Population Becomes More Urban Than
Rural.” Science Daily 25 May 2007. 27 September 2008 <http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2007/05/070525000642.htm>.

Rukmana, Deden. “One hundred work day program of new Jakarta’s governor reflects Jakarta’s
urban problem”. Indonesia’s Urban Studies. 3 November 2007. September 27 2008
<http://indonesiaurbanstudies.blogspot.com/2007/11/one-hundred-work-day-program-of- new.html>

Stark, Linda, ed. The State of the World: Our Urban Future. W.W. Norton. New York. 2007.

Sudjic, Deyan. “Cities on the Edge of Chaos”. The Guardian. 9 March 2008. Spetember 27 2008
< http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/mar/09/architecture.design>

“Sustainable.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.

United Nations Development Program. “Urban Problems Remain Similar Worldwide.”
International Colloquium of Mayors 28 – 31, July 1997. 27 September 2008
http://mirror.undp.org/magnet/icg97/SURVEY.HTM

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Jakarta (Batavia, Djakarta, Jakarta, population and the Chinese)

 

House detail, Pasar Baru, Jakarta

Population

How many people live in Jakarta? (And who counts them?). That number varies depending on what you mean by ‘Jakarta’. Is it Jakarta or Daerah Khusus Ibukota or Jabodetebek? Is it the number within metropolitan Jakarta or greater metropolitan Jakarta? Is it nine million or thirteen million or twenty-three million people?

Prior to 1619, how many people lived in Jayakarta? Perhaps, maybe one or two thousand people.

When the Dutch anchored their ships in Jakarta Bay at the mouth of the Ciliwung River how many scruffy lice bitten Dutchmen were there? Not many.

Here are some interesting notes gleaned from Abeyasekere’s Jakarta: A History, with some additions.

Batavia – Jakarta 1673 to 2004

Year       Population

1673     27,000 (including 13,278 or 49% slaves and 2,024 or 7%
                          Netherlanders, 2,747 or 10% Chinese)

1730     20,000 (walled town) 15,000 (suburbs)

1779     12,131 (old town) 160,986 (scattered to the mountains)

1815     49,000
1850     70,000
1900     116,000
1930     435,000

1945     844,000 (20,000 or 2.3% of this population were ‘beggars’)

1948     1,050,000 (in 1948, the first 1 million people)

1952     1,782,000 (in 1953, 75% of Jakartans were born outside of
                               Jakarta)
1965     3,813,000
1976     5,700,000
1980     6,500,000
1989     9,000,000

2004     13,000,000 (2004 population exceeds that of 1900 by 112 times)

 

 

2008? 19 to 23 million people in greater Jakarta. Does anyone know? And is it possible to count everyone? Making Jakarta the seventh, eighth, or ninth, largest city on the planet. There are new arrivals daily.

It took 329 years, from 1619, when Dutch slaves built Fort Batavia, to 1948, before the city’s population reached one million

In the period from 1900 to 2004, the city’s population grew by 112 times to reach a population of thirteen million and more. This is one-third the time it took the city to reach its first one million residents. This is also where Batavia, essentially a Dutch colonial city, disappears to become Jakarta, the ‘mother city’ of Indonesia.

During the 1950s things really started to roar.

The rapid rise in population was such that, as Abeyasekere writes,

“The majority of new immigrants shared existing housing… …The state of affairs is described by the poet Ayip Rosidi, who arrived in Jakarta as a boy in 1951. Coming from Jatiwangi in West Java, he was appalled at the place where his uncle took him to live in. It was an alley in Galur sub-district, east of the Senen Market. The area was only a few years old, very muddy and full of huts with grass-thatched roof. Rosidi lived for several years in one of these huts backing onto a river lined with privies.

Houses were built in an unbroken row; his row measured 33 feet by 23 feet, and contained 57 inhabitants. The boy shared a bed with two other men in a small room inhabited by five people.

He later wrote: ‘It was entirely beyond anything I had imagined before actually coming to Djarkarta, and I felt nauseated. I had never, never thought I could live in such squalor. Yet little by little… I grew familiar with Djakarta housing, knowing that it was sometimes possible to live in a row of shacks, as we did, only after some stroke of good luck’ “.

That is 57 people in an area measuring 33 feet by 23 feet or 759 square feet. Shared among 57 people this would allow each person a space of 3.5 feet by 4.5 feet. If you calculate the space needed for cooking, sleeping, or other household items this space is further reduced.

Later, Abeyasekere quotes Rosidi in his attempt to come to terms with urban life,

“…I felt that I’d been placed in a sickening cage, that I’d lost my roots, that I stood right in the middle of an international city’s whirling confusion, a city that opened itself to every current and never flinched away, a bustling activity without direction or purpose, a city of lies and tricks“.

In 1951, there were only 47 trucks and 600 handcarts available to collect rubbish. Of the trucks which were available about one in six was out of action and in need of repair.

For the entire city there were only 60 men and 4 trucks employed to empty privies. In 1954, in a city of nearly two million people, there were only 84 public restrooms, none of which had water.

If you wanted to ring up City Hall to complain there were only 8,204 telephone connections. The joke was that it was quicker to walk across town to deliver a message than use the telephone (if you could find one).

The Chinese

Chinese presence in Java dates from as early as the ninth century. Trade in spices and Chinese luxury goods was long established before the arrival of Europeans.

Before the Portuguese and the Dutch started mucking things up the Chinese were present in the town of Jayakarta where they grew sugar cane and distilled arak. The de Haan map of Jayakarta shows ‘Chinese Houses’ along the left bank of the Ciliwung River between the ‘defense line’ north of Kyai Aria’s District and Fort Batavia. Neither in or out of one camp or another but always potentially in the line of fire of either.

Abeyasekere quotes Coen as saying that “…there is no people who serve is better that the Chinese, and so easy to get as the Chinese“. She writes, “So keen was he [Coen] to build up their numbers quickly in Batavia that in 1622 he sent ships to kidnap people on the coast” … and “The Europeans were heavily dependent on Chinese labor and on merchandise from East Asia brought in by Chinese junks. In 1625, the Chinese fleet trading in Batavia had a total tonnage at least as large as that of the whole VOC return fleet” … and concluding that “so dominant was the role of the Chinese, in fact, that a recent historian has argued that from 1619 to 1740 Batavia was, economically speaking ‘basically a Chinese colonial town under Dutch protection’.

Abeyasekere: “The rapid influx of Chinese contributed to the opening up of the country around Batavia, and it was this development which caused anxiety to the Company, since outside the walls it was much harder to keep the Chinese under surveillance”.

It was these Chinese, as Abeyasekere points out, which developed Batavia’s sugar estates and its only original export of raw sugar and arak.

“From 2,747 Chinese within the town in 1674 the registers show a jump to 4,389 in 1739; in the environs (a nebulous term denoting the hinterland as far south as the mountains) 7,550 Chinese were counted in 1719 and 10,574 in 1739 (likely to be an understatement)”.

To control this rapid rise of immigration the Dutch concocted escalating regulations. They tried to place a quota on how many Chinese could be brought in by junk. This was evaded by the Chinese simply through landing people along the coast away from Batavia. Finally, in response to a glut of sugar on the global market which threw many Chinese coolies out of work the Dutch proposed to move them to their company outposts in Ceylon, “which rumour had it amongst the distressed Chinese, was just a ruse for dumping them at sea”.

The year 1740 marks a bloody turning point in the Dutch and Chinese relationship. The economic down turn in the sugar markets eventually led to a peasant revolt on the outskirts of Batavia. Abeyasekere writes, “Carrying home-made weapons and flying banners inscribed ‘To assist the poor, the destitute, and the oppressed’ and ‘Follow the righteous of old times’, the Chinese coolies marched on the city, where hundreds of their compatriots lived behind the walls. Although the latter had little or no contact with the Chinese outside, rumors spread that they were planning to assist the rebels. When the ill-armed Chinese force attacked the town on 8 October, the fact that they were easily repulsed did not save the Chinese inside”.

And so it began. Europeans and Indonesians “attacked, burned, and plundered” six to seven thousand Chinese homes and massacred perhaps as many as one thousand Chinese while the government stood by and did nothing. Five hundred Chinese were arrested and held at the Town Hall only to eventually be led out and executed one by one. “For a week the town blazed with fire and the canals ran red with blood.” While order was eventually restored the peasant rebellion would continue to 1743.

The events would set the pattern for later incidents in Jakarta’s history such as the anti-Chinese protests of the 1960s, the Soeharto purge of the Communist Party in 1965, and the ethnic riots in 1997. Still, the root of anti-Chinese violence lies with the Dutch who created and enforced the highly stratified society of colonial Batavia which is something the Indonesia elites of Jakarta have taken advantage of, have promoted, and have yet to address and resolve.

Abeyasekere concludes that, “Jealousy of Chinese commercial success simmered among many other citizens, who took advantage of a break down in law and order to attack the Chinese and loot their property. Little protection of the Chinese has been offered by Jakarta’s governments, who have often seemed prepared to allow the Chinese to be treated as scapegoats for the inadequacy of their own administration”.

Indeed.

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Jakarta (in transit)

Narita, Japan (in transit to Jakarta, 2004)

Below is an email reply, somewhat modified from the original, to an email I was sent recently.

I will be in Jakarta next month, in April, for about three weeks. There are a few people I need to see. Check out my cognative map and take photographs.

If you are still planning to write your article about blogging in Indonesia here are some ideas.

I confess I have not the slightest idea what blogging is.  

I don’t know how I know this but I have read that blogging has been around for about seven or eight years. It is not new, and it seems, just by the shear volume of blogs listed in search engines on the internet, that a lot of people are doing it these days.

The web site Indonesia Matters has a list of 500 blogs with their subject being Indonesia.

I came to be a blogger from a project I worked on in a Human Geography course at the University of Hawaii, Hilo, in 2007.

As I  was working on a presenation about monuments in Jakarta  I found one web site named deviantArt. This is not a blogging site but it is a site where people post their writing, artwork, and photography. If you go to that site and search “Indonesia” or “Jakarta” you will see some very remarkable art that Indonesians and Jakartans are producing. Some of the finest photos I have ever seen are on that site.  I have used photos from deviantArt in Jakarta Urban Blog, always to asking permission first (no one has turned me down so far, thanks).

My current university course  is urban geography or urban studies.  The notion that I could create a blog to use in this course seemed a logical  way to share information and my interests. 

 Before I knew it I had acquired readers from all over the world.

If you write, make your money that way, you know that it is not an easy thing to do. Writing takes time and it takes thinking. I have a full time job, part time school, a house, a wife, two cats, and a this blog.  All need attention. And so does my Support page.

As I am busy posting images, keeping up a links list, keeping the weatherpixie happy, I am also writing from a distance. I am not in Jakarta.

Mostly what comes out of Jakarta seems to be bad news. The city has more than its fare share. But that is the character of news, is it not? Urban centers are increasingly becoming more and more important in the larger scheme of things.

The planet will live or die by cities.

 Cities on the edge of chaos …>go to site

“It is one of the most seismic changes the world has ever seen. Across the globe there is an unstoppable march to the cities, powered by new economic realities. But what kind of lives are we creating? And will citizens – and cities – cope with the fierce pressures of this new urban age? Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum and author of a major new report, asks if the city of the future will be a vision of hell or a force for civilised living? “

 Sudjic states, “Cities are made by an extraordinary mixture of do-gooders and bloody-minded obsessives, of cynical political operators and speculators. They are shaped by the unintended consequences of the greedy and the self-interested, the dedicated and the occasional visionary. The cities that work best are those that keep their options open, that allow the possibility of change.

The ones that are stuck, overwhelmed by rigid, state-owned social housing, or by economic systems that offer the poor no way out of the slums are in trouble. A successful city is one that makes room for surprises. A city that has been trapped by too much gentrification, or too many shopping malls, will have trouble generating the spark that is essential to making a city that works.”

Which brings to mind Sukarno. Such a different time.

“Comrades from Jakarta, let us build Jakarta into the greatest city possible. Great not just from a material point of view; great, not just because of its skyscrapers; great not just because it has boulevards and beautiful streets; great not just because it has beautiful monuments; great in every respect, even in the little houses of the workers of Jakarta there must be a sense of greatness… Give Jakarta an extraordinary place in the minds of the Indonesian people, because Jakarta belongs to the people of Jakarta. Jakarta belongs to the whole Indonesian people. More than that, Jakarta is becoming the beacon of the whole of mankind. Yes, the beacon of the New Emerging Forces.”

-Sukarno as cited in Abeyasekere 1987: 168 

What happened?

Now, more people live in cities than at anytime in the history of humanity. 

This  is the subject of the web site Urban Age. From this  The Endless City  edited by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic in collaboration with the London School of Economics and the Urban Age Project will be published soon.

The problems of cities are ultimately going to be solved by the people who live in them.

I do not entirely despair that Jakarta is so broken that it cannot be fixed.  If not fixed then understood. And to understand you must see. There are many scholars, journalists, human rights workers, bloggers, and Jakartans whose central interest is the welfare of the city.

I am looking forward to seeing them.

 

Jakarta (megalopolis)

 Photo by mizsz

 Review

Jakarta Megalopolis: Horizontal and Vertical Observations

Arjan van Helmond and Stani Michiels, Valiz Publishers, 2007, 179 pages.

What were we doing? Now I remember, we were headed to Gambir Station to buy tickets to Perwokerto and then after that just burning time before we had to take the new Toyota van my wife’s brother had just purchased back to his house in Depok and meet him there after he was finished working for the day.

It must be a tradition in Indonesia that when you purchase a new vehicle the first thing you do is loan it out to family member.

So then, it was Budi, the husband of my wife’ sister, and I, with the new van, heading out from Citayam on an early sunny morning and headed into Jakarta for the day. We drove out of the neighborhood and onto the main street winding past shops, stores, and businesses packed to the very edge of both sides of the road and which seemed to stretch away like an endless film loop, then on past the Citayam train depot bottleneck, on through Depok, and then finally taking the back roads all the way into Jakarta.

By this time I had been to Jakarta so many times that I had lost count but with out doubt on every occasion there seemed to be a new way to go and new things to see. This day was no different. Budi was taking me on the maximum tour. Down streets I never knew existed, past apartment complexes, malls, embassies, cemeteries, monuments, and a lake where he said he had once seen monkeys. “But maybe no more“, he added. I really liked the notion that there was a lake with monkeys. I filed that away in my head where the idea has rooted into a life of its own to this day.

Jakarta – Lake – Monkeys

Just like that.

Budi clearly knew what he was doing and where he was going. He only mentioned once or twice, out of sincere humility, that he was lost as a result of on the spur of the moment experimenting with a new shortcut. Still, we were back in good order in a snap.

I was there for the ride and the pleasure of watching Jakarta float by my window. But I wondered how he knew where he was going and where we were.

“Budi, how do you know where we are and where we are going?”

“When I first moved to Jakarta I just drove around and around the city day after day”.

Budi had, through time, experience, and experiment created in his head a mental map of Jakarta. He could not survive there with out it. He had made place out of Jakarta’s urban space. He had worked up his own internal geography.

Whether I realized it or not this is what I was also doing. Through most of our day I had no landmark I could anchor myself to in the warren of Jakarta’s densely complex streets punctuated by crazy intersections where no pedestrian would dare to tread, until I saw, in the long distance, hovering in the sky like a signal, the National Monument. I knew then Gambir Station was not far off.

I think it was at that time that Jakarta started to click in my mind

There is an occasional moment or two during the day when all this comes back to me. Out of the murk it comes to the surface like a fish in a pond and rolls its back once or twice. There I am magically arriving at Gambir Station or stuck in the jammed traffic around Blok M or picking out the landmarks heading back Citayam, home, the mosque across the street, the beautiful faces of the children returning from school.

How do you know Jakarta?

 the review is continued here …> go to page