Jakarta (what sex is about)

Photo: The Jakarta Post (World AIDS Day)

Jakarta ranks the third largest city on the planet.  See my previous post:

Jakarta (multipoliCity metrochaotic)

Ignorance is bliss, someone once quipped.

But it’s not bliss at all.

It’s deadly.

From:  The Jakarta Post 7/28/2009

Population control ‘a weapon of the West’

Andra Wisnu , The Jakarta Post , JAKARTA | Mon, 07/27/2009 11:05 AM | National

Speakers at a conference for young Indonesian Muslims Friday, urged the audience to denounce birth control methods such as condoms and the government’s family planning program, claiming such measures were part of a conspiracy to weaken the country.

At Ragunan Sports Center in South Jakarta, speakers at the conference titled, “Young Muslims, save Indonesia with Sharia and the Caliphate” asked the young attendants to reject contraception based on the rationale that reducing the population would weaken the country and draw it further into the conspiracy plans of the West.

“The effort is further supported by prohibition against marrying, such as the age limit to marry and give birth, which is above 20 and below 30,” said Nadiya Rayhan, a student activist from the Islamic State University (UIN) during the conference.

She said one of the government’s family planning programs, Teenage Reproductive Health (KRR), had allowed teenagers to learn about sex and practice sex freely, which is denounced by Islam.

Furthermore, she said the program’s information about abortion has disseminated the idea that it was acceptable for young Indonesian Muslims not to have children, which she linked to an attempt to weaken the country.

“This is clearly an attempt at genocide that has been planned carefully by the West,” she said.

Cicin Yulianti, a student activist from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, elaborated on the “genocide” conspiracy further, saying that more people in Islamic countries would increase the possibility of stronger human resources.

She also said the fact that the population of Western countries, 20 percent of the world’s population, which consumed 80 percent of the world’s agricultural resources, signaled a motive for the West to obstruct population growth in Islamic countries.

“Young Muslims must wake up to this conspiracy,” she said. “Young Muslims must not eat up the poison packaged by the West with jargons like ‘caring about your reproductive health could give you a prosperous life,’ which forces Muslims to reduce in number”.

The conference was held by Hizbut Tahrir, an Islamic organization based in Indonesia. There were no men in attendance and the Ragunan Sport Center was filled with women and young girls clad in headscarves.

Several women and girls interviewed by The Jakarta Post said the conference was useful, though most of them did not understand the concept of sex or abortion.

Intan, a 17-year-old girl from an Islamic high school in Cibubur, said she had heard about the conference from a Koranic group that she always attended and decided to attend to increase her knowledge of Islam.

“I think it’s useful as it helps me to gain more of an insight into what Islam allows and what Islam prohibits,” she said after the conference.

Dina Hariyani, a teacher from an Islamic school in Jagakarsa, South Jakarta, said she hoped speakers would be more clear about the concept of sex and how to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

“I hoped that my students could come out of this conference at least knowing what sex was about,” she said.

“But my students said they still did not understand.”

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 (The Menteng Kids)

Somewhere in Jakarta 1932

Still not fixed after all these years. My, those crazy Menteng Kids.

The Jakarta Post reports  on January 14, 2009 (yes it is that time of the year again):

FLOODS: Torrential rain and high tide swamp city’s northwest
Heavy downpour coupled with high tide Monday caused deluge in several areas across North and West Jakarta.

The City Coordination Board for Disaster Mitigation (Satkorlak) reported that two community units (RW) in Muara Baru and Penjaringan in North Jakarta were submerged in 20 to 35 centimeters of floodwater.

The morning rain raised the water level at Pasar Ikan floodgate in North Jakarta, to 205 cm, higher than its normal level of 170 cm.

The board upped the floodgate’s alert status to second level, or one level below the top alert, to warn the residents of possible flooding.

A top alert status will be issued if the water level at the gate goes above 230 cm.

Head of the board, Bobby Aryono, said the deluge was caused by rainwater buffeted by high tide at Jakarta Bay.in Muara Baru is only 20 cm deep.a normal incident,” Bobby told reporters at City Hall.

“It should recede within three hours.”

City Governor Fauzi Bowo said the flooding at Muara Baru was caused by a broken sea embankment at Nizam Zaman Port, which is operated by state-owned port operator company PT Pelindo.

“I hope Pelindo repair the broken embankment immediately,” he said.

Jakarta Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) said the seawater level reached 220 cm Monday.

Earlier last week, BMG said several areas in North Jakarta would be hit by flooding as the rain was expected to peak at the end of this month.

Rainwater Monday also caused a river in Jelambar Jaya kampung, Petamburan, in West Jakarta to overflow. three days, the streets here have been deluged by river water,” said Surati, a Jelambar Jaya resident, as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

“The 50-centimeter-deep flood should recede within three hours once the rain stops,” she added.

Toby, another resident, said residents in the area experienced regular flooding twice a month.

Knee-deep rainwater inundated the entrance gate, Carnival Beach and Festival Market of Ancol Dreamland in North Jakarta.

The 50-centimeter-deep water outside the recreation center on caused traffic congestion for several hours in the morning.

According to data released by Satkorlak on Monday, water levels at Karet floodgate in Central Jakarta as well as other 12 main floodgates in Jakarta and the uphill area of Bogor were below normal.

Jakarta was hard hit by flooding in 2002 when two-thirds of the city was submerged in water. Floods claimed 34 lives and forced more than 384,000 residents to evacuate their homes and live in shelters. — JP/Agnes Winarti

Those Menteng Kids

“The permanent and ever extending intervention of the state apparatus in the area of the processes and units of consumption makes it the real source of order in everydaylife. This intervention of the state apparatus, which we call urban planning in the broad sense, invloves an almost immediate politicization of the whole urban problematic, since the adminstrator and the interlocultor of the social claims and demand tend to be, in the final analysis, the political appartus of the dominant classes.”

  -Manuel Castells (The Urban Question)

 

Batavia Official Tourist Bureau 1920 – 1930

In this post I will continue my discussion of  Planning the Megcity, Jakarta in the Twentieth Century, Routledge, 2008. NY, by  Christopher Silver from the previous post. All quotes are from his text with the page number cited unless otherwise noted. I want to examine some of the sections in Chapter One ‘Understanding Urbanization and the Megacity in Southeast Asia and Chapter Two  ‘Fashioning the Colonial Capital City, 1900 -1940′.

Silver notes at the beginning that, “The city’s [Batavia] development before 1900 was driven by events during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when planning intervention was largely limited to efforts to embellish the colonial city to suite the wishes of a minority of its citizens, namely the Europeans, and Asians who dominated the city’s economic activity.” /1

“Further, the direction and location of the eleven rivers that run from the mountains to the low-lying areas where the Dutch had established their colonial administration centre in the seventeenth century created natural barriers which determined both the direction and boundaries of the city’s growth. Even as population growth in colonial Batavia accelerated after 1900, there was relatively little divergence in the basic pattern of urban growth. The city remained compact, squeezed onto the highest ground between the frequently flooding rivers”. /1

Reflecting on his own experience of Jakarta Silver says that, “The Jakarta I first encountered was many respects the outcome of carefully calculated planning interventions; a city where planning was an integral part of the apparatus of government management”. /2

In his introduction Silver writes of Menteng,  ”Built in the early twentieth century for the European community at what was then the outer most edge of Batavia, Menteng helped to launch the modern planning movement in the city, and involved prominent Dutch planners and architects practicing in the Netherland Indies. The bequeathed to the city what was one of its most elegant and sought after addresses”. /10

And emphasizes that, “The foundation of modern Jakarta has roots deep within the Dutch colonial era”. /14

In Chapter One Silver begins, “The most enduring impact of colonialism on Southeast Asia cities was to link them more fully within a global economic network.” /25

And cites McGee: “…the most prominent function of these cities was economic; the colonial city was the ‘nerve center’ of colonial exploitation. Concentrated here were the institutions through which capitalism extended its control over the colonial economy – the banks, the agency houses, trading companies, the shipping companies and the insurance companies.” /27

And Dean Forbes: “…the colonial period disrupted the economic and social geography of Southeast Asia. It brought significant changes to the distribution of economic activities, reinforcing the rise of the colonial port city, which in turn provided the foundation for the post-World War II surge in urbanization. These cities were dominated by the colonizers, whose needs generally came first, with the indigenous economy at the margins of the city.”

Silver adds that, “An increasing concentration of wealth and political power within the urban elite accompanied the substantial increase in urban population, most of whom existed on the margins of society”. /29

Kramat, Salemba, Kebun Sirih, Prapaten, Pegangsaann, Jatinagara, New Gondangdia, and the prized Menteng all were Dutch designed extensions of Batavia.  And “everything in Batavia is spacious and airy” /43

Silver cites Furnivall “in 1900 the European community was detached from native life but had no complete independent life; by 1930 it lived within its own world, with its own cultural interests and with its trade unions and labour politics, alongside, but wholly separate from the native world” /44

And (amazingly) that, “In 1930 there were 35 daily newspapers, 54 weeklies, 91 monthly magazines and no fewer than 100 cultural, economic and political societies to support Batavia’s expanded European world.” /45

Accordingly “racial classification was the cornerstone of the colonial administration” and there was “no unitary political system”.  /45-46

 

And those Menteng kids… let me introduce you to some of those who planned and built Batavia.

Frans Johan Louwens Ghijsels, 28, architect, born in Tulung Agung, East Java, graduate of the Technical University Delft.  If you drive by or use Jakartakota Stasion you see his handiwork everyday. He was involved with  the Home municipality of Batavia, 1918, the Menteng Property Company (1920-21), Bukit Duri Manggara (1918), Indo-Eurasion Association (1923), and wrote plans wrote plans for Bandung and Batavia (1917-1918).

There was Henri Maclaine Pont and Thomas Karsten who wrote the 1916 Master Plan for Semarang (first modern urban plan). Karsten would note of  Menteng that ”satisfactory provision for the housing needs of the well-to-do seems assured” /56-57

Wikipedia has it about Karsten: “Herman Thomas Karsten (1885-1945) was a Dutch engineer who gave major contributions to architecture and town planning in Indonesia during Dutch colonial rule. Most significantly he integrated the practice of colonial urban environment with native elements; a radical approach to spatial planning for Indonesia at the time. He introduced a neighborhood plan for all ethnic groups in Semarang, built public markets in Yogyakarta and Surakarta, and a city square in the capital Batavia (now ‘Jakarta’). Between 1915 and 1941 he was given responsibility for planning 12 out of 19 municipalities in Java, 3 out of 9 towns in Sumatra and a town in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). He received official recognition from both the government through his appointment to the colony’s major Town Planning Committee and by the academic community with his appointment to the position of Lecturer for Town Planning at the School of Engineering at Bandung. He died in an internment camp near Bandung in 1945 during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia”. 

There was, Silver continues, F.J. Kubatz, Director of the Municipal Department of Land and Housing in Batavia involved with New Gondangdia, Burgermeester Bisschopplein (Taman Suropati). /51-52  And the Menteng plan itself  by P.A.J. Mooijen based on garden city model of Ebeneezer Howard. F.J. Kubatz would later modify Mooijen’s Menteng plan. There was J.F.L. Blankenburg designer of homes at Menteng. Silver provides an interesting list  of consulting firms operating in Batavia, Semarang, Bandung:

“Menteng provided a continuous stream of commissions for the growing cadre of design and planning firms that had set up shop in they city. There were several large consulting firms in Batavia and other key cities that appeared after 1909 and functioned in carrying out both design and construction. These included M.J. Hulswit, A.A. Fremont and Eduard Cuypers, Biezeveld and Mooijen, Bakker and Meyboom, and Ghijsels’ ‘trendsetting’ AIA, all operating in Batavia; Karsten, Lutjens, Toussaint, and Henri Maclaine Pont with offices in Semarang, and C.P. Schoemaker and Associates the leading firm in Bandung.” /60

Perhaps what is most telling is that Silver notes “The Public Works Department was influenced, and at several junctures, led in the early twentieth century by the Dutch Social Democratic Party, virtually all trained at the Technical University of Delft. According to Van Door, the development agenda of these engineers was progressive and… the indigenous population did interest as a matter of care, but in a round-about way (emphasis is mine) … Like all technocrats, these civil engineers were wholly concerned with the application of science in practice, with technical innovation and rationalization… They had pronounced admiration for productivity and for rationalization and planning springing froma dislike of traditional ways and capitalistic waste. The colonial system where engineers and planners were free to follow their own fancies offered these technocratic tendencies considerable scope”. /48-49

In a “round-about way” this would allow them, after all, to create spacious and modern enclaves where “European residents received four times the amount of water than delivered to native residents”. /52

And it would allow them, not withstanding their political principals, to accept a “local public policy” which was ” to avoid any interference, or investment, in the indigenous areas” and to sell their “technical innovation and rationalization” to the Dutch elites.  /52

Prior to the roaring 20s in Batavia in “1901, there were 304 private estates, 101 owned by Europeans and the rest largely owned by Chinese with 800,000 peasant holdings”. It is not detailed what exactly is meant by a “peasant holding” but it might be assumed that more than one individual lived on the holding owned by a Dutchman or a Chinese. And I assume “peasant” means a Javanese farmer.

It is hard to do justice to Silver’s book in these short posts so I do not want to appear as if this is a gloss. But it is clear that Batavia was built for the Dutch by the Dutch. That race, colonialism, power, and the right (or claim) to the city were urban topographies just as high and strong as the walls of Fort Batavia of 1619 which protected the Dutch from the “locals”. In  part this goes to explain something of why Jakarta is a city but NOT an Indonesian city. More of that later after we examine the kampung in Batavia.

The discussion will continue.

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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 (banjir, 101 East: Mega cities – Mega problems)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TransJakarta

 

Don’t forget your payung…  rain or shine…

 

From the AP, May 29, 2008

World Bank warns tidal flood may hit Jakarta

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – The World Bank warned Thursday that an exceptionally high tide could inundate the Indonesian capital next week, forcing thousands of people to flee homes and cutting off the highway to the international airport.

The situation – exacerbated by global warming and the fact that Jakarta is sinking up to 2 inches a year – could mean flooding will exceed last November’s roof-high levels in the hardest-hit areas, said Hongjoo Hahm, the bank’s infrastructure expert.

“This is just the beginning,” he said, as he pointed to homes reaching a mile inland that will likely be affected Tuesday and Wednesday by the 18-year semiannual tide cycle. “It’s getting worse and worse.”
Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago nation, is one of the world’s largest contributors of carbon dioxide emissions, thanks to the rapid pace of deforestation. But experts say the country is also at risk of becoming one of the biggest victims of climate change.

Rising sea waters especially pose a threat to coastal cities like Jakarta, which has sunk at least 7 feet in the last three decades because of excessive ground water extraction, said Hahm.

Eventually, the government should consider building a Dutch-styled dike to protect the Jakarta Bay, he said, “but that will cost billions of U.S. dollars.”

The 18-year high tide cycles occur when the sun and moon are in direct alignment and making their closest approach to the Earth. Other factors, such as global warming or El Nino and La Nina, have made the sea swells even larger in recent years, Hahm said.

 

 

From Al Jazeera, May 26, 2008

Mega Cities – Mega Problems

“By the end of this year, over half the world’s population will live in urban areas. It is a trend that is set to continue.

By 2050, it is predicted that 70 per cent of the world will be city dwellers.

Some of the fastest growth is occurring in Asia, where mega cities are blossoming, particularly in developing countries.

Take Indonesia’s capital Jakarta – its population has risen rapidly from 1.2 million in 1960 to 9 million today, and that is counting just legal residents.

By including Jakarta’s sprawling metropolitan area, the population rises to 23 million. And it is still growing rapidly”. …go to article

 

From 101 East  (these videos are  well worth watching if you are interested in Jakarta and “cities”)

This week, 101 East asks if developing countries can create mega cities that are fit to live in.

Joining host Teymoor Nabili to discuss the issue is urban planning expert, Professor Ricky Burdett from the London School of Economics, Nandita Mongia, the Asia-Pacific advisor on energy and the environment for the United Nations Development Programme, and architect Alejandro Gutierrez, whose company is creating a purpose-built eco-city in China.

 

Part 1

 

Part 2

Jakarta (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.