Happy birthday, to our beloved, ruined Jakarta

Nirwono Joga, Chairman, Indonesian Landscape Architecture Study Group, Jakarta

It's a bit difficult to feel happy on the capital's 476th anniversary when urban life and the environment have reached an increasingly critical stage.

The Blok-P graveyard, consisting of four hectares in 1997, is now the site of the South Jakarta Mayoralty office, the Pantai Indah Kapuk housing complex is where the protected Muara Angke forest was once located, while a nearby mangrove forest was reduced to 328 ha from 1,200 ha in 1998. Part of the Pluit reservoir has been converted to make way for the Pluit Mega Mall, and Mall Taman Anggrek now stands where Tomang's urban forest once did. The Bung Karno Stadium area has had to accommodate Senayan Plaza and Hotel Mulia, while sea water intrusion has crept in as far as 14 kilometers to the National Monument Square or a third of Jakarta, and land subsidence has reached an alarming 40 centimeters in North and West Jakarta.

In addition, some of the city's green areas are littered with gas stations and illegal settlements are mushrooming along river banks, beneath high voltage transmission lines or under overpasses. Fire-fighting has been rendered difficult everywhere due to muddled spatial planning and a water supply from hydrants or other sources where fires break out is also limited.

Public parks and playing fields are shrinking in size, while officers chase people out of parks because they violate the "Keep off the grass" signs. If children are told to stop playing in vacant lots by the owners' security guards, where should they all go?

During the rainy season, Jakarta becomes flooded and during the dry season, a dwindling clean water supply becomes even more critical. The quality of groundwater continues to deteriorate, and 94 percent of this source of water has been contaminated by the e-coli bacteria as well as iron and manganese.

Jakarta's air is no less polluted either. The rate of unhealthy and very unhealthy air, which was at a zero level in 2000, has dropped to 3.23 percent and 0.27 percent respectively in 2001, and fell further to 8.49 percent and 0.82 percent in 2002. Besides an increase in the number of vehicles, the acceleration of felling up to 10 trees a day has contributed to the reduction of the trees' capacity to absorb and process dangerous gases. The ecological suicide that we first warned about in the 1960s is taking place, yet a sustainable supply of clean water and air has never been systematically prioritized in programs.

As the city's lungs, open green areas are a major producer of oxygen, an absorber of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other pollutants, while aiding in the drainage of excess water. A plot of 1,600 square meters planted with 16 trees, each with a diameter of 10 cm, can supply 14,000 liters of oxygen per person. Every hour, a hectare of green leaves can absorb eight kilograms of CO2 equivalent to the CO2 exhaled by about 200 men an hour.

The capital's administration has instead undertaken various controversial projects, such as the renovation of the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle and launching the land reclamation project along the northern coast. Amid the unprofessional management of open green space, the city administration is even striving to handle the Bung Karno Stadium area (280 ha), the former Kemayoran airport area (440 ha), the port zone (912 ha) and toll road medians for 136 km (500 ha), with greater commercial orientation than urban environment conservation.

Spatial development shows indifference toward our children, the aged, the disabled and the dead. In 2020, Indonesia is estimated to have the world's highest population increase of the elderly with 414 percent. Ironically, Jakarta only has the Dutch colonial heritage as its open green space, such as the Banteng Square (1799), the National Monument Square (1809), the Surapati Park (1926), the Situ Lembang Park (1926) and the former graveyard of Kebon Jahe, which is now the site of the Museum of Inscriptions. Other city parks and cemeteries are neglected despite the hundreds of billions of rupiah spent on the region's spatial arrangement so far.

The inconsistency in developing space has also been reflected in the city's plans, namely the Jakarta master plan of 1965-1985 with its target of 37.2 percent open green space, the Jakarta spatial design general plan of 1985-2005 with only 25.85 percent and the Jakarta spatial design plan of 2000-2010, which is as low as 13.94 percent. Meanwhile, field surveys have shown that only about nine percent (50.53 ha) of Jakarta's total area of 66,152 ha constitutes open space, so that the city is virtually suffering from urban lung cancer.

New space has to be developed to make way for urban forests, city parks, playing fields, cemeteries, botanical gardens, environmentally friendly municipal dumps, green median strips and those beneath overpasses and high-voltage transmission lines, as well as open areas along and around river banks, coastlines, lakes, marshes, reservoirs and dams.

The city's spatial layout and conservation has been carried out according to Article 33 of the 1945 Constitution, Law No.5/1992 on cultural heritage, Law No.24/1992 on spatial design and Law No.23/1997 on environmental management. A number of regulations need to be revised.

A regional regulation on landscape conservation should be promptly formulated to protect the continuity of urban space as a long-term city asset, for its potential as well as investment purposes. An urban landscape guideline is also urgently needed. Any restoration, renovation, rehabilitation, reconstruction and conservation of open space, let alone attempts to serve commercial interests, have to be preceded by an independent analysis showing the environmental and social impact they will have.

The provincial administration will never succeed in developing and managing the city's open green areas without actively involving its stakeholders. Their involvement from the beginning to the final stage of the blueprint drafting of Jakarta's landscape plan through public hearings should accommodate all the different aspirations as much as possible. And the Jakarta council should firmly reject projects contrary to the development of the city's open space.

Everything boils down to our determination to bring Jakarta's development back on the right track. Are we still brazen enough to ignore the sustainability of open green space, which guarantees the continuity of our city and its citizens?