Control the growth of cities, Soeharto warns

JAKARTA (JP): The growth of cities needed serious attention to prevent more problems, President Soeharto said yesterday.

Although urban areas are expected contribute up to 80 percent of Indonesia's national income, the expansion has created several problems such as diminishing agricultural areas and the emergence of city slums, he said.

This is why "there is no alternative but to pay serious attention so that the growth of cities is under control," Soeharto said.

He was opening an international conference titled "The Future of Asian Cities" at the Presidential Palace.

City growth was not related only to "urban hardware" or its facilities but also to its "...cultural plans to enhance the dignity and standing of life of urban societies," Soeharto said.

As Asia became one of the world's economic centers it would be difficult to manage the world's cities by individual countries, he said.

"An intergovernmental cooperation" would be needed to manage these cities, the President said.

The conference was attended by about 400 experts from more than 20 countries and will run until Dec.5. It is jointly organized by the New York-based organization, The Asia Society, and the Jakarta-based Center for Information and Development Studies, CIDES.

Most Indonesians, or 155 million people, will be living in cities in 2019, Soeharto said.

By 2019 there will be 15 new urban areas with populations of more than 1 million. Four of them will be megacities with more than 10 million people each, he said.

Mega-cities here "will be globally linked to the provincial, regional, Asian and even world economic systems," the President said.

Cities will play "an even greater pivotal role," in the midst of higher competitiveness in the global market, he said.

Nicholas Platt, The Asia Society's president, 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.

These changes "will shape Asia's urban development for decades to come," Platt said.

Participants included urban planners, developers, bank representatives, architects and activists.

Platt said Indonesia was an appropriate place for the conference "because of its compelling past, its booming present, and its prospects for a bright and dynamic future."

"Few governments have done more to improve the life of poor residents living in kampongs in cities than that of Indonesia," Platt said, citing the successful Kampong Improvement Project. (anr)