City Hall's will to expand green areas questioned

City Hall's will to expand green areas questioned

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Environmental experts have questioned the city administration's
commitment to expand the capital's green, open spaces, as ruled
in the city masterplan, when existing green spaces remain poorly
maintained.

"How can they increase the city's green areas if they cannot
keep up the existing parkland adequately," the head of the
landscape architecture department at Trisakti University, Rully
Besari Budiyanti, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Rully gave an example that the city administration had used
nearly one hectare of parkland at the National Monument (Monas)
as a parking lot for employees of City Hall and other nearby
offices.

She slammed the decision made by city leaders to convert
Monas' parkland, saying that such a bad example could be followed
by other citizens.

Based on the Jakarta Masterplan 2000-2010, the administration
is required to expand the area covered by parks, street greenbelt
and riversides, to 13.94 percent of Jakarta's territory (63,744
hectares) within 10 years.

Based on data from the Indonesian Forum for the Environment
(Walhi), green areas now only cover around 9 percent of the
city's total land area. It said that ideally it should be around
30 percent.

Environmentalists underlined two main functions of green
areas, namely to minimize floods during the rainy season, as they
absorb water, and to reduce air pollution as the trees absorb
hazardous gas emissions.

Many parks in the city are in a very poor state. In Cideng
subdistrict in Central Jakarta, for example, nearly half of its
600-square-meter park has been converted into a basketball court
and an office building.

Teenagers playing ball in the park on Monday could be seen
ignoring a notice stating that such games were prohibited in the
park.

Data from the City Park Agency also shows that over 300
properties -- including fuel pumps, police posts, power relay
stations, shops, kiosks -- occupy green areas.

Rahardjo Martosubroto, an environmental observer who is also
from Trisakti University, said green areas could be increased
significantly if the city administration firmly maintained the
regulations for the land coverage ratio of properties in
designated green areas.

The ratio ranges from 10 to 60 percent, depending on the type
of property. The land use coverage ratio of green areas is ruled
by, among others, Bylaw No. 7, 1991.

"If the city administration were able to strictly enforce
these land use regulations, it would make a significant
contribution to the addition of green areas in the city," he
added.

But unfortunately, said Rully, the city administration had set
a bad example by allowing the private sector to convert public
facilities into other functions, which violated environmental
principles.

She cited, as an example, the conversion of one piece of
parkland by a private company in Kelapa Gading, East Jakarta,
into a sports center.

Head of the city planning agency Setiawan Kanani admitted his
agency lack the staff necessary to supervise the management of
green areas. "Actually, if we strictly complied with the
masterplan, the conversion of green areas would never happen,"
Kanani told the Post.

To stop the violation of land-use regulations, Rully advised
the city administration introduce guidelines on the urban
landscape, which provides more specific details about land use in
the city.

"While the masterplan only rules on land-use zoning, urban
landscape guidelines would elaborate on the detail uses of land
in the city," he added.