Expert blasts City Hall's poor attention to greenery

Expert blasts City Hall's poor attention to greenery

By Marco Kusumawijaya

JAKARTA (JP): Batavia (old Jakarta) is rather a park city than
a garden city, wrote H.P. Berlage, the great Dutch architect who
designed the South Amsterdam expansion after his visit in 1923.
Batavia refers to the old city of Jakarta.

By "garden city" he referred to the town design movement
inspired by Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities of To-Morrow, (1898).

In Europe the movement produced a new range of architectural
idioms of carefully formed (green) open spaces as integrated
parts of new towns and residential neighborhoods.

In Bandung, the areas surrounding the Governor's Office are
often described as the best examples of such principles in
Indonesia. Lewis Mumford, the most prolific writer of urbanism
ever, wrote that, At the beginning of the 20th century two great
new innovations unfolded before our eyes: the airplane and the
Garden City ... the first gave man wings and the second promised
him a better dwelling-place when he came down to earth.

But a park city Jakarta was, not just a garden one: expansive
open spaces with massive trees were immensely abundant up until
World War II. In 1946, a survey registered 256 bird species in
the city. But in March 1997, sadly only 105 remained. It is only
one of many sad stories caused by the decrease of greenery in the
city.

What also matters greatly is the fact that what is left is so
discontinuous and fragmented that the birds cannot fly safely and
conveniently in their efforts to feed and build nests. Many
smaller species cannot fly far. They need transit greens
according to a research conducted by the Symbioses Bird Club and
Metropolitan Environmental Improvement Program in 1998.

Definitely, there are many other reasons why Jakartans share
with many people in other Indonesian cities, a deep anxiety about
the status of the city's remaining open spaces. The news about
Cibubur camping ground being sold with the prospect of the
development of a hyper-mall on the site, for example, is
comparable to the recent news Surabayans received about the fate
of their city's zoo, and to the sadness Ratih Sanggar, the famous
ex-model from Ngawi in East Java, feels for the fate of her home
town's alun-alun (town square).

In Jakarta's previous master plan (1985-2005), which was
prematurely superseded by a recent revised version, the Cibubur
camping ground area was still marked as "recreational green
space". In the new plan, formalized in 1999, it was designated as
a zone for "public building with low density". The color has
changed, so to speak. And now we know why it has changed: someone
wants to develop a hyper-mall there! Perhaps it was already a
"committed project" - more jargon from City Hall - during the
process of master planning.

And all of these have been taking place without public
knowledge until the news reluctantly leaked out.

Beyond square meters

In a recent seminar discussing Jakarta's new spatial plan
(reported in the Jakarta Post, on Feb. 14, 2001), its officials
take pride in arguing that the city still has more public open
spaces than Tokyo in terms of square meters.

But an architect-photographer, Yori Antar, who recently
returned from Tokyo, exclaimed to me about how different it was
there: people do not need large houses because the whole city is
their house, with public spaces are kindly and continuously
accessible -- something Jakarta does not really have!

The Garden City movement instructed that it is naive and
misleading to discuss the open space in a city in terms of square
meters only. Forms, continuity, accessibility and comfort matter
much more importantly.

The way to judge their success is very simple: how many people
use them. Children are the group using them most frequently. They
need access to parks safely near to or within their residential
neighborhoods.

They should be spared from having to cross any dangerous
thoroughfares or be exposed to the hustle and bustle of certain
parts of the city -- the world of strangers.

The Park and City Beautiful movements in the United States in
the later half, especially towards the end, of the 19th century
were not only concerned with the design of individual important
public buildings and parks.

Frederick Law Olmsted's design for Central Park and his later
projects represented a decisive attempt to organize urban
greenery into a system within the diverse, confused and
unpredictable structures of the developing metropolis.

A system of greenery ties together a city as a a whole and
should make the continuous open spaces conveniently accessible to
the public. Parks and open spaces, therefore, constitute a method
and instrument of urban planning.

This principle has influenced to varying degrees the plans for
Washington, Chicago and Singapore, among many others.

In the face of a very historical competition with the
burgeoning suburbs, as population has declined during the last
ten years with 314,688 souls in Central and South Jakarta, the
massive city may need some serious form of "City Beautiful
Movement" as a necessary, albeit insufficient, remedy to its
illness.

Parks and open spaces also need more than just trees -- even
if these are the most fundamental, considering the climate -- but
also useful, clean and comfortable facilities such as wide
walkways, cycling tracks, benches, public toilets and last but
not least, public art.

Public Art

"But all sculptures in Jakarta are basically misplaced,"
Dolorosa Sinaga, a sculptor and dean of the fine arts school at
the Jakarta Arts Institute, claimed last week. "This is because
there has never been any master plan regarding their placement
within the city...."

That's why it is so difficult to enjoy existing sculptures,
some of them created by important Indonesian masters, in
Jakarta's open spaces.

The importance of walking in the city should never be
underestimated. In Tales from Djakarta by Pramoedya Ananta Toer,
the entire 28-pages of Stranded Fish were about the chats of two
friends strolling around and about the present Monas park.

Afrizal Malna, the "urban" poet, says that such texts can only
come out of a situation where people are walking. Walking in the
city makes people sociable and able to perceive more of the
reality of their surroundings.

What remains to maintain

In many cities, zoos and botanical gardens still constitute
major parts of their green areas. They are the product of the
advance of natural sciences and colonial-imperialism in the 19th
and early 20th centuries.

Then, they were at the edges of new urban expansions in, for
example, Bandung, Surabaya, Bogor, Jakarta and even Antwerp. In
terms of actual distance, they have been, however, very close to
the cities' centers. And now, they have naturally become the very
centers of those cities. So have any old cemeteries. With the
cities' centers become ever more dense and congested these
"emptiness" within them are even more crucial. Open spaces and
high-density areas enhance each other's values.

A city that is completely "full" is suffocating -- literally
and psychologically. Voids and solids are like the Chinese's yin-
yang concept of harmony of interdependence. Any thought about
filling those open spaces is therefore close to insanity.

If it is for the benefit of some plants, animals and resting
souls, they indeed could perhaps be better move out, but the open
spaces proper must remain.

Moreover, we are not too naive to understand that most of the
time the lobby to move them out is based on kindness toward them,
but instead motivated by greed in realizing the commercial value
in the land for developing something else.

But filling in the open spaces will completely undermine the
factor that has in the first place enhanced their values to the
whole city, not just to the revenue column of the city's budget.

Lost

Jakarta has lost much already. Let there be no more loss.
Karet cemetery in Central Jakarta had been reduced to accommodate
road widening. Blok P cemetery, at Jalan Wijaya in Kebayoran
Baru, will be the location for the future City Hall of South
Jakarta.

The bird sanctuary at Muara Angke has been reduced to a
quarter of its previous allocation. Many buildings have filled
bits and pieces of areas that were, in the previous master plan,
categorized as "green open space". Conspicuous examples include:
the Mulia Hotel in Senayan and the Taman Anggrek Mall in Tomang.
Jakarta will lose many other open spaces if the new master plan
is let to take effect.

There should be no more loss. How? City dwellers, and users no
less, need to show that they care, that they want the open
spaces. Use them well, in crowds! Claim them! Demand easy and
safe access, as well as quality facilities.

Constructively develop a DIY (do it yourself) culture of
maintenance and associate yourselves into urban movements. It is
time we show that our wishes count. We count. Cities are the
people, writes Sophocles.

* The writer is an architect and expert in urban issues.