Ambition blamed for visionless city development

Ambition blamed for visionless city development

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian cities are facing several major
problems, including a visionless over-development driven by an
ambition to catch up with other cities in the region, a scholar
says.

Johan Silas, head of the Laboratory for Housing and Human
Settlement at the Surabaya Institute of Technology in East Java,
yesterday identified limited quality human resources and
unprogressive institutional development as among the problems
besetting urban centers in Indonesia.

Johan was speaking at the International Conference on Urban
Culture in Asia titled The Future of Asia's Cities here
yesterday. The gathering was arranged by the Asia Foundation and
the Center for Information and Development Studies (CIDES) at the
Jakarta Convention Center, and will last through to tomorrow.

President Soeharto, who opened the conference, said Monday
that cities's growth needed serious attention to prevent more
problems from occurring.

According to Johan, the government and the private sector
should sit down together to agree on a common vision for urban
development. This vision should be sensitive to the aspirations
of the city's poor, he said.

"The vision needs to include the aspirations of the common
people, who are actually the city's income generators," Johan
added.

Johan also said a shift in function has made cities no longer
the center of political, social and cultural affairs. Economic
motives, instead, are now dominating urban development, he said.

"Older understanding of a city was that it was the center of
governance, political, social and cultural activities. Because
there is weak governance controlling development, economy wins,"
Johan said.

He said Indonesian town and cities are now being developed
mostly because of the pressures of economic interests.

He conceded, however, that the trend also occurred in the
cities of many other countries where development was controlled
by economics, not the government.

Indonesia's urban growth largely reflects the current pattern
of urban growth in Southeast Asian countries which is marked by
imbalanced spatial usage.

"Indonesian cities other than Jakarta, especially outside
Java, should be given a chance to develop and attract investment
since competition now is not only between countries but also
within a country," he said.

Also speaking at the conference yesterday was the United
States Ambassador Stapleton J. Roy who said that U.S. foreign
policy could be "compromised" if Asian cities were not managed
properly and begin to hold back economic growth.

"All of the areas where U.S. foreign policy attaches
importance in Asia, such as living standards, which contributes
to the region's stability, will be compromised if better ways are
not found to deal with the explosive growth in Asian cities," he
said.

According to the ambassador, the region's stability is put at
risk when governments are unable to come up with a solution for
improving economic growth and living standards.

Urban areas are expected to contribute up to 80 percent of
Indonesia's national income.

Jakarta Governor Surjadi Soedirdja also gave a speech
yesterday.

Hasan-Uddin Khan, a visiting associate professor from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Architecture,
also spoke. Khan identified five issues to be considered by
people pondering the forms of future Asian cities, including the
need to reinterpret the city as a network of complex pluralistic
interactions.

The conference was attended by about 400 experts, including
urban planners and architects, from more than 20 countries.

Nicholas Platt, The Asia Society president, had earlier said
the conference's focus was the "challenges and opportunities" to
the world created by the shift from rural to urban living in
Asia.

By the early 21st century Asia will house 4.2 billion people.
By the year 2010, 30 cities in Asia will have populations of more
than five million each. (06/anr)