Jakarta at 474

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.