Depok: City with diverse, high population growth

Depok: City with diverse, high population growth

Bambang Nurbianto/Remmy Faisal
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Before its status was upgraded to an administrative city in 1982,
Depok was only a small, quiet district of Bogor regency, West
Java, with a population of less than 300,000 people.

Now, however, Depok has developed into a bustling municipality
with a total population reaching 1.2 million people. In fact,
Depok proper has turned into a crowded town, with traffic
congestion now a common sight.

"Traffic congestion is really annoying. Our relatives in
Jakarta often complain about difficulties to reach here due to
traffic problems," Martha, a resident of Beji district, told The
Jakarta Post recently.

Traffic jams are mainly the result of poor infrastructure, but
that is just one of many problems in the municipality, located
just south of Jakarta. On June 26, the Depok municipality will
hold it first direct election for mayor.

Bumper to bumper, vehicles creep along roads into the capital
in the morning and late afternoon as at least a third of
population works in Jakarta.

According to former Depok Mayor Badrul Kamal, who is also
running in the upcoming election, around 400,000 of the
municipality's residents work in Jakarta.

Back in the 1970s, the government developed what was called a
pilot project for national housing in Depok. Soon afterward,
however, private developers built more housing complexes there
and that contributed a lot to the rapid growth.

According to data from the Depok municipal administration,
houses cover some 30 percent of Depok municipality's territory of
20,504 hectares.

Meanwhile, the ratio between undeveloped and developed land is
55 to 45. Apart from housing, developed land is also used for
offices, markets, factories and other commercial facilities.

The municipality is also home to one of the country's leading
universities -- the University of Indonesia (UI). Other
universities in Depok are Gunadarma University on Jl. Margonda
Raya, and the University of Pembangunan Nasional (UPN) on Jl.
Pondok Labu. Nearly 5,000 students from all over the country
study at those three universities.

In trying to fulfill the daily necessities of the bulging
population, new commercial zones are being planned and/or are
being developed. Currently, there are 11 shopping centers, six
traditional markets, and 2,102 shops in the municipality.

Depok consists of six districts -- Cimanggis, Sawangan, Limo,
Sukamajaya, Pancoran and Beji.

Various ethnic groups have lived in Depok since the Dutch
colonial era as workers from several regions of the country had
been based near the many former plantations in the area.

The diverse ethnic population of Depok, which was established
as a municipality in 1999, continues as new comers occupy many
housing complexes and students from various regions flock to
Depok every year.

The excessive development in Depok has often been blamed for
worsening annual floods in the capital. Many green zones have
been paved over for roads, houses and malls.

The master plan of Depok regulates that 50 percent of its land
must be maintained as a green zone.

Its neighboring regions -- Bekasi and Tangerang municipalities
respectively -- call for maintaining 40 percent and 30 percent of
their land as green zones. Meanwhile, green zones in Jakarta are
between 6 percent and 9 percent of its territory.