Depok district developing into bustling, diverse big municipality

Bambang Nurbianto and 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.