Cult hysteria: Third mall from the sun

Cult hysteria: Third mall from the sun

It is a well-documented fact that Jakartans don't seem to be
able to get enough of shopping malls. Despite the half-million-
odd plazas that have already opened their deodorized doors to the
capital's swelling masses, more are being built all the time.
Current drains on the country's precarious cement reserves can be
seen under construction in both Senayan and behind the Hotel
Indonesia traffic circle, and all this in spite of the fact that
these areas already house two malls a piece.

Yes, Jakartans love their malls. They encapsulate the pride
and hubris of the nation's bright, new, free market future. Well,
that is what the mall developers would have us believe at any
rate. However, this affection for malls would appear, to this
correspondent at least, to be a developer's self-fulfilling
prophecy. If people have nowhere else to go in their leisure time
other than malls, where are they going to end up? If someone had
the vision and bravery to build a sports center, a theater, an
art house or even a park instead of another plaza, are we to
believe that no one would go to them?

I am not here to bemoan the city's woeful lack of public
space, however, and perhaps the mall has indeed won the battle
for the 21st century Jakartan soul. A thousand years hence,
cyborg archaeologists and anthropologists will unearth Jakarta's
great plazas, along with petrified Starbucks beakers and mobile
phone casings, and pontificate on what a strange religion their
ancestors practiced in these places. They will theorize upon what
mysteries lie behind these modernist temples that will seem to
them as exotic as those of the Aztecs or the Pharoahs.

If anything, the cult of the mall became even more entrenched
in the city's collective consciousness with the opening of
Cilandak Town Square (or CiToS as it is colloquially known) about
three years ago. In the Town Square, shops have been replaced by
cafes and restaurants and the last vestiges of mall functionality
have been eradicated completely in favor of lifestyle hedonism.
Going to the mall has now become an end itself and the Town
Square is perpetually filled with youngsters hanging out, sipping
cappuccinos and enjoying the 120-decibel racket of top 40 cover
bands playing in the lobby.

Cafes such as Starbucks, Excelso, Brew & Co. and Mister Bean
(ha, ha), restaurants like Mykonos, Izzi Pizza, Tartine and Fish
& Co., plus a cinema and two bars, have insured the massive
success of the Town Square. The fact that it was built in an area
of town housing the kind of people who have the largest
disposable incomes to spend there hasn't harmed it either. To be
fair though, the Town Square is a not an unpleasant place in
which to drink a cup of overpriced coffee; its open-plan,
doorless design being similar to a classic European shopping
arcade.

The trouble is, CiToS' runaway success has illuminated dollar
signs in the eyes of other developers who also want a piece of
the non-retail leisure mall action. So now the cafe and
restaurant-filled Town Square concept has been reproduced, with
mixed results, in, for example, Dharmawangsa City Walk, just off
Jl. Fatmawati in South Jakarta, which is an apocalypse of Greco-
Roman statuettes and mock Elizabethan lamp standards. Town
Squares have also begun to spring up outside of town. There is
Serpong Town Square (SeToS), Depok Town Square (DeToS) and Malang
Town Square (MaToS). Where will it all end? With no one giving a
flying ToS presumably.

Let us also not forget the dark side of all this relentless
mall expansion, a side that lies beneath the surface of all this
ersatz fun.

During the construction of CiTos, for example, three houses on
Jl. TB Simatupang were bulldozed despite the residents' ownership
of the land on which they stood and the fact that they had lived
there for 37 years. To be fair, the compulsory appropriation of
private land for public projects, an issue hitting the headlines
at the moment in Indonesia, is something that happens in all
countries. However, when combined with the corruption and shaky
legal system that exist here, you have to feel sorry for the poor
poor people who are turfed out of their homes in order to make
way for more malls.

Demolish the town to build the town square, a strange idea
indeed. There is no standing in the way of progress though and
soon we'll all be living, eating, sleeping and dreaming in a
mall. I have seen the future -- and it is cappuccino colored.

--Simon Pitchforth