Government urges growth of independent towns

JAKARTA (JP): Self-contained towns where people work and study near to their homes are the answer to congestion and the rising costs of urbanization, State Minister of Housing Akbar Tanjung said yesterday.

"Self-contained cities can curb the movement of people to large cities and can even draw people away from crowded urban centers to the new towns," said Tanjung while opening a two-day seminar on urban development.

"We can therefore put the brakes on various problems in large cities which involve high costs, such as housing, transportation and traffic management," he added.

Urban development experts at the seminar said that, in reality, self-styled "independent towns" like Serpong, West Java, were still dependent on the metropolis Jakarta.

"Many people still live in small towns but work and enjoy facilities in Jakarta," said an official from the National Development Planning Board, Budhy Tjahjati S. Soegijoko.

"Major cities have to shoulder a heavy burden because they have to serve not only their own inhabitants, but also people from the neighboring small towns," said Tjahjati, also the assistant to the state minister of national development planning.

For instance, she said, 70 percent of Bekasi residents commuted to and from Jakarta, which strained services in the capital, such as parking space and garbage disposal facilities.

Ciputra, a leading real estate developer, said that in the future the Bumi Serpong Damai complex would live up to its claim to be a self-contained city, as it would have its own central business district.

An urban development expert from the Bandung Institute of Technology, Djoko Sujarto, said the current trend was one of a "sprawling of the metropolis", rather than the beginning of the growth of self-sufficient cities.

One of the characteristics of a truly self-contained city, he said, was that it was at least 40 kilometers away from the next city, instead of only about 20 kilometers away, as in the case of what he described as the present "dependent new towns."

Self-contained towns had their own center of administration as a new subdistrict or regency, Sujarto said.

Another characteristic of a self-contained town, he added, was that it was more than a residential enclave. Critics have claimed that the development of the present satellite cities reflect exclusivity.

"The 'balanced residential concept' (set out by the government, referring to one high-priced house to three middle- priced and six low-priced houses) should not mean housing for the rich, middle income and poor social groups in different areas," he said.

Ciputra said the main constraint in building self-contained cities was soaring land prices.

However the head of the National Land Agency, Soni Harsono, said that as of May only 13,275 out of 81,203 hectares of land in Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi allocated for housing sites had been built upon.

"The remaining 67,928 hectares, which already have permits for housing, could house almost 16 million people," he said.

Given the a projected population of Jakarta and its surrounding areas of, respectively, 16 million and 21 million, Harsono said that, at least for 16 million, "there will still be enough land until the year 2010."

Both Harsono and Minister Tanjung warned against developing housing estates and towns on productive land.

"Locations must be sought among less productive agricultural land and (developers) must avoid technically irrigated areas, to secure government investment in irrigation projects...," said Tanjung.

Harsono stressed that his office would not issue permits for developers who planned to build on productive agricultural land.

On Friday, Minister of Agriculture Sjarifuddin Baharsjah expressed concern about the rapid change in the use of productive agricultural land for other purposes.(anr)