Jakarta at 474
It may be a sign of the times that Indonesia's capital city, Jakarta, marked its 474th anniversary on Friday all but unnoticed even by the its own citizens. This is a far cry from earlier years, especially in the 1970s, when the city was governed with both forward-looking vision and energy by its most successful governor yet, the liberal-minded governor Ali Sadikin.
Until the late 1960s, Jakarta was known to the international community as "the world's biggest village." Its population of several millions had far outgrown the city's public services and infrastructure, which had been planned by the previous Dutch city administrators to serve some 600,000 people at the peak of its projected growth. Few modern buildings existed and slums were beginning to encroach on residential neighborhoods.
It was Ali Sadikin, better known to Jakarta's citizenry as Bang (Brother) Ali, who first tried to put some order in the situation. Under the slogan of men-Jakarta-kan orang Jakarta (making Jakartans out of Jakarta's inhabitants), he was responsible for giving this city much of its present look. What he meant was that Jakartans should be made to feel proud to be Jakartans in order to motivate them to actively contribute to the city's development.
To that end he initiated the Jakarta Fair, an annual event that was meant to be a venue to promote business and industry as well as to provide entertainment for the people. With his encouragement, the popular Ancol Dreamland seaside playground on a beach in North Jakarta was built. To encourage the city's growth as one of the nation's cultural hubs he built the Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) arts center and completed the neglected planetarium project inside its grounds. He restored and revived the Jakarta Playhouse, or Gedung Kesenian, near Pasar Baru and developed the city's infrastructure, never mind if some of the money had to come from legalized gambling -- a method of financing that was strongly opposed in some quarters of the community.
That era seems to have passed with the ending of governor Ali Sadikin's tenure in the late 1970s. From then until the present day, most governors of Jakarta seem to have done little more than preserve and build on the groundwork already laid by Bang Ali. But, although it must be said that some, or even most, of the later governors who followed in Ali Sadikin's footsteps lacked the vision and energy that was necessary to keep up the momentum of the city's development and renewal, to be fair it must also be noted that the times have not always been favorable for Jakarta's subsequent governors, competent as they may have been as chief administrators.
Certainly, as the city marked its 474th anniversary this week, conditions in Jakarta have drastically changed. These days, it seems like an overindulgence to talk about growth and development in Jakarta, and yet, growth and development are needed even more than ever before. Even though new roads and urban toll roads have been built, roads are constantly clogged with traffic, one of the reasons being that public transportation is so chaotic, unsafe and decrepit that everyone who can afford it prefers to drive a private car or motorcycle to commute to and from work.
The green, open spaces that are needed to keep the city's air healthy and serve as playgrounds for children and the populace at large, keep diminishing to make way for all sorts of public or private buildings. In brief, there is still a lot of work to be done by Jakarta's city administrators as the city turns 474 years old. A mission impossible? Perhaps. But even a little improvement to start with would be welcome.