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In Jakarta's previous master plan (1985-2005), which was prematurely superseded by a recent revised version, the Cibubur camping ground area was still marked as "recreational green space".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.