Green Jakarta not a utopia

Green Jakarta not a utopia

Nirwono Joga
Jakarta

Jakarta is heading toward ecological suicide. Soil subsidence
has reached a depth of 40 centimeters in North, West and Central
Jakarta. Seawater intrusion has led to the structural corrosion
of buildings and flyovers while the contamination of groundwater
has encroached on some 14 kilometers of land around the National
Monument (Monas) Square, or a third of the territory of the
capital city of Jakarta.

The northern coastal area of Jakarta has been contaminated by
heavy metal waste, which has killed thousands of fish while
abrasion has also been found in over 50 percent of the area. The
sky of Jakarta has become increasingly grayer, an indication of a
high level of air pollution, following the increased felling of
trees growing in the city's green belts, the rapid growth of
motorized vehicles and a rise in traffic congestion. Unless a
comprehensive and integrated revamping of the entire city is
conducted, it is predicted that Jakarta will experience total
traffic congestion in 2014.

Also waiting to be thoroughly settled are the problems related
to the threats of floods during the wet season and fires in the
dry season, environment-related diseases such as dengue fever,
avian influenza and diarrhea, due to the lack of environmental
sanitation, and garbage management.

A green city, in the sense of a city with parks or a city
where trees grow in abundance, must be the longing of all
residents of Jakarta. The key words are environmental awareness.
Unfortunately, these two words have served only as an oft-
repeated discourse on the concept drawn up for the sustainable
development of Jakarta. Various development projects -- not
development plans -- are based more on discourse rather than on
studies and well-prepared, comprehensive, profound and long-term
planning devised to solve various urban problems.

The provincial administration of Jakarta has not been
consistent in its efforts to establish a green city despite the
various green programs that it has introduced, such as the Urban
Green Movement, 1970, the Jakarta Teduh, Hijau Royo-Royo and
Berkicau Program, a program launched in 2000 to turn Jakarta into
a shady and green city marked by chirping birds, or the Green
Jakarta Program, 2003.

Various development projects have led to the felling of many
trees. Take, for example, the construction of busway corridor II
from Pulo Gadung to Monas. For this project to go on, as many as
248 of 1,510 trees growing along Jl. Perintis Kemerdekaan and 564
trees growing along Jl. Letjen Suprapto have to be cut down.

More trees have to be removed for the construction of busway
corridors III and IV -- VII in 2007, the establishment of the
blue and green monorail lanes and the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT)
flyovers. The trees are felled at an acceleration of 10 trees a
day (or 3,650 trees annually), which is all the more reason why
the target of planting 6,202,816 trees of a total of 10,812,500
trees planned in the city's 2010 spatial layout design plan will
become ever more difficult to reach.

The emphasis on urban planning is given only to how to prevent
people from experiencing more serious traffic jams. City
residents are considered, therefore, as mere objects or goods
that must be delivered from one place to another as quickly as
possible without the slightest thought that these people need to
enjoy their journey in a comfortable urban landscape space.

The busway project has led to a significant drop in the
quality of air and visual landscape of major roads in Jakarta.
Areas prone to traffic congestion and alternative routes with a
limited capacity to accommodate the traffic continue to sustain
more serious traffic jams.

It has been proven that trees can lower temporary, chronic or
lethal disturbances to health caused by air pollution, such as
giddiness, nausea, acute respiratory infection, asthma, lung
cancer or acute blood cancer. Health costs incurred by air
pollution stood at some Rp 2 trillion in 1999 and will double by
2010 unless the degradation in the quality of the environment is
addressed by, for example, tree planting, the construction of
comfortable pedestrian lanes, the provision of urban mass
transportation means and the imposition of a restriction over the
mobility of private vehicles, according to studies conducted by
the World Bank in 1995 and by the Japan International Cooperation
Agency in 1996.

In this respect, the Jakarta administration has instead
reduced its green open spaces. According to the Jakarta Master
Plan for 1965 to 1985, this green open space constituted 37.2
percent of the city's territory. In Jakarta's general spatial
layout design plan for 1985 to 2005, however, the percentage
shrank to 25.85 percent and in the present territorial spatial
layout design plan, 2000 to 2010, the percentage has gone even
lower to just 13.94 percent or a total of 9,545 hectares.
Meanwhile, the area of green open space on the ground, in
comparison with the total area of the city, has continued to drop
to only 6,900 hectares 9.12 percent in 2004.
By comparison, the ideal standard percentage for a healthy city
is about 30 percent.

The green open space planning in some of the world's
metropolises, which are densely populated and crowded with
buildings, is much better than in Jakarta: New York (25.2
percent, 2020), Tokyo (from 29 percent to 32 percent, 2015),
Singapore (19 percent, with a reserve green space accounting for
37 percent of the city state's total area, 2034) or London (39
percent, 2020).

The government of Singapore is applying tightly the standard
of 0.4 hectare of green open space for every 1,000 people in a
real estate/housing compound, or a park measuring 10 hectares in
area for every district or area of the same level or 1.5 hectares
for every block of apartments/hotels. For a compound of
condominiums/apartments/hotels the green basic coefficient is set
at 60 percent.

If Jakarta applies the standard of 7.81 m2 of green open space
for every resident, it will need 15,897 hectares of green open
space (or 21.45 percent of the city's total area) as a water
catchment area or 23,500 hectares of green open space (36 percent
of the city's total area) to control air quality and absorb
airborne pollutants.

As Jakarta's green open space is planned to be only 13.94
percent of the city's total area, in 2010 this green open space
can catch only 54 percent of the water that comes to this city,
leaving the remaining 46 percent of the water to flood the city,
and can control only 40 percent of the city's air, leaving the
city with only one urban "lung".

Double standards, inconsistency and corruption have made the
provincial administration of Jakarta turn upside down its
priorities in the establishment of the city's green open spaces.
Corruption in urban planning has led to nonsustainable urban
development oriented only to short-term economic considerations
as well as to plots of land originally designated for the city's
green open space being turned into roads, real estate,
apartments, hotels, malls, shopping centers, flyovers,
underpasses or even toll roads.

A green city as an asset, a potential and long-term
investment, characterized by its economic, ecological,
educational and esthetic values, as its own sales value and
therefore "necessitates" the involvement of all parties, be they
urban planners, city administration, urban developers or city
residents.

In good urban planning, the designation of plots land for the
construction of buildings, the designation of the green open
space, a transportation system and the circulation of pedestrian
lanes must form a harmonious synergy. Regardless of the grandness
of the transportation megaprojects and the construction of
infrastructure, people will finally have to walk to the buildings
they visit.

The establishment of a macro transportation pattern (busway,
monorail, subway, waterway) must be balanced with the
establishment of comfortable pedestrian lanes along the
corridors, and the construction of stations or bus stops that are
integrated into the urban network structure.

It is obviously impossible to build a green city that is
leafy, shady, comfortable and beautiful in the absence of serious
and professional efforts to manage the green open space and
conserve urban trees. A green city can be built only in dozens or
even hundreds of years.

The writer is chairman of the Study Group of Indonesian
Landscape Architecture.