6,000-hectare waterfront city to be built, governor says
6,000-hectare waterfront city to be built, governor says
JAKARTA (JP): Governor Surjadi Soedirdja has that the city
administration will reclaim 6,000 hectares of the Jakarta Bay in
order to turn the capital's northern coastal zone into a modern
waterfront area.
"The land for development is getting harder to obtain whereas
the need for a larger port, better housing and recreation centers
is increasing," Surjadi said.
Speaking to dozens of Dutch businessmen at a luncheon hosted
by the Indonesia Netherlands Association (INA) at a hotel in
Central Jakarta on Wednesday, Surjadi said that the sister-city
relationship between Jakarta and the Netherlands' city of
Rotterdam inspired Jakarta to reclaim the 6,000-hectare area.
"Let's hope you have enough money to finance this project,"
Surjadi said, referring to the expertise in reclamation projects
of Dutch engineers.
A number of prominent people, including the Netherlands
ambassador to Indonesia, Jan Herman R.D. van Roijen, and INA
chairman Frans Seda attended the luncheon.
INA, which was established in 1978 by a group of Indonesian
and Dutch businessmen to promote business relations between
communities in their two countries, has its head office in
Jakarta and branches in Surabaya, East Java, and the Hague, the
Netherlands.
Surjadi said that feasibility studies for the reclamation
project, which will include Ancol and Kapuk, are still
being made by the city administration.
"We also plan to build a water sport recreation facility but
its acreage will be larger than that of the Gelora Senayan," he
said, adding that the development of the project would not damage
the ecological balance in the area.
A Sydney-based urban planning firm, the Planning Workshop
International (PWI), had earlier proposed that the Jakarta
administration turn the northern coastal area into a waterfront
city to cope with limited space in the capital.
The Jakarta administration has since then worked together with
PWI, which designed the development of Darling harbor in New
South Wales, Australia, and revitalized the Kuching waterfront in
Malaysia, to draw up a blueprint for the waterfront project.
Rotterdam
In a related development, Surjadi praised the progress of the
sister city relationship between Rotterdam and Jakarta.
"Compared with those of other cities, the mayor of Rotterdam,
Bram Peper, is one of the most frequent visitors to Indonesia,"
he said.
The Indonesian government currently has a trade center in
Rotterdam, which is viewed as a gateway to the European market,
with the objective of informing European buyers about goods from
Indonesia.
Surjadi also took the opportunity to brief Dutch businessmen
about Jakarta, including its superb 8.2 percent annual economic
growth and the serious impact of urbanization.
He said that despite the tremendous annual growth, Jakarta
with its 8.5 million population also faces serious social ills,
such as poor public transportation, improper housing and
unemployment.
Environmentalists, however, have pointed out that the
reclamation will not only affect marine life but will also shift
current wave movement, sedimentation patterns and other aspects
of the complex coastal water system.
The destruction of mangrove forests along the coastal area
will also worsen sea water intrusion, which has reached the Monas
area in Central Jakarta. (09)