Jakarta fails to reform bureaucracy

Jakarta fails to reform bureaucracy

By Marco Kusumawijaya

JAKARTA (JP): All city problems that bedevil Jakarta stem from
its incompetent governance and lack of leadership integrity.

In fact, learning from other cities' development, local and
foreign, there is no single condition in Jakarta that cannot be
improved provided that its bureaucracy manages to reform itself.

As global competition lurks, Jakarta is under pressure from
numerous urban problems both chronic and urgent in nature.

The listing of best Asian cities in the Dec. 15, 2000 issue of
Asiaweek ranks Jakarta a lowly 28th out of 40 others. It only
just behind Manila (25th) but far behind Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh
(17th), Bandar Seri Begawan and Kuala Lumpur (7th), and Singapore
(third). Jakarta only excels over cities like Phnom Penh (31st)
and Vientiane (36th).

No offense is intended but it is certainly humiliating to find
Jakarta in the league of these two cities.

The survey also recorded a rise in the unemployment rate in
2000 compared to the previous year from 12 percent to 16.8
percent. Annual income per capita declined to US$ 7,269 from
$7,665; GDP growth dropped to negative 1.3 percent from positive
3.1 percent; and commuting time has become as high as 79 minutes.

The methodology and the accuracy of the survey is open to
debate but the truth remains: Jakarta is rated very low in a
weekly that gives basic information to global investors.

In the public transportation sector, for example, commuters
are well aware that there is no hope for improvement even with an
addition of 4,000 buses imported from China.

Acquiring new buses won't solve the problem, if a better
system and management are not installed.

Flood-prone areas are not shrinking, if anything, they are
enlarging. Spatial planning is not conceived to support
fundamental improvement in the mass transport system.

Indeed only a conforming spatial and land-use plan can support
a paradigm shift in transport planning: from demand-led to
demand-control approach.

We are not even sure that the less than sound plan will not be
made even worse by violations that may be justified in the next
plan. Environmental problems, such as the lowering of the water
table, diminution of mangrove forest and others, requires even
tougher management.

The decline in the number of housing stocks in the city with
concurrent flight of the middle class to the suburbs will soon,
for the first time, present Jakarta with the classic problem of
urban center degeneration, as it will lose an important tax base
and motivation for maintenance.

Density is often claimed as the source of problems in a
metropolis like Jakarta. Whereas the reverse is also true:
density is a source of life for a metropolis.

Density, when smartly managed, will be a blessing, as it will
not just be 'numbers', but more specifically, enriching
diversity.

The renowned, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas celebrates this as
'programmatic density' in his theory and works. Indeed people
migrate to Jakarta for both productive (work, opportunities,
career paths) as well as consumptive ('city lights', among
others) diversified density.

Prof. Peter Hall, a British historian of urban civilization
and planning theories, in his book Cities in Civilization (1998)
discovered that diversified density is crucial for innovative and
creative processes, comparable to bio-diversity and cross-
breeding that yield an ever improved species.

He argues that in their respective golden years the
metropolises of the world have had diversified density and
interaction as key success factors.

Berlin, for example, in the period 1920-1933 became the world
capital in terms of all forms of art and economy. Its density was
608 persons per hectare.

Jakarta's density is less than 150 per hectare. The number and
variety of print-media in Berlin during the period showed an
intensity of communication among the population. It surpassed
that of any other city. Berliner Morgenpost alone has a
circulation of 600,000 (for a city of 4 million people).

But of course density of population, capital, and ideas are
only useful when mobilized into channeled potentials. This is why
we need popular participation in the governance of Jakarta.

It is not only because participation is a basic social-
political right of the citizens (whose etymological origin means
those of a city), but also because it is the only way to nurture
broad-based creativity.

Moreover, some fundamental decisions that need to be made,
such as on the integration of land-use and public transport plan,
must be based on wide-range consensus to guarantee success at
all. This requires that the citizens be well informed as early on
as possible.

This way they will be empowered and motivated to think
collectively. They should not be told only after decisions are
made in a fait accompli manner through a misguided process of so
called 'socialization', which is itself an abused concept.

The New Order has indeed turned off diversity and initiative,
even though Ali Sadikin (Jakarta governor from 1966 to 1977) had
encouraged them in his own style. The reformation movement should
be an opportunity to revive them, and to harness a participatory
process to establish 'new deals', both horizontally and
vertically.

We need to also broaden our concept of urbanization to include
more social and cultural events. This has taken us some time to
realize, after the developmentalist and reductionist concept of
urbanization imposed by the uninspiring regime.

The people not only have a right to a city that does not only
expand endlessly in an ad-hoc manner but they also need to know
how to build, inhabit, and use the city in a civilized way.

One needs to learn to be an urban dweller, to behave and
socialize in a way urbanites should. Urban spaces will have to be
pregnant with clear, qualified architectural concepts to
facilitate that learning process.

One example, one cannot be forced to reduce the use of private
cars unless sidewalks are made convenient, safe, nice to look at,
and given sufficient space.

Architecture, urban design, design competition, urban
landscape, need to be an obsession within the metropolitan
society, if it is to compete at all -- with at least the other
Asian capitals.

Efforts must start somewhere. Could it be that transparent and
participatory urban governance naturally pre-requires a clean
house of bureaucracy?

Our mistake so far has been to believe that political change
will automatically bring changes at the bureaucratic level. Of
course new legislators and governors have been elected through of
a 'new system'.

But the situation is akin to garbage in garbage out!

Decentralization and autonomy have been put into motion. But
there is no significant change in the daily administration of the
city.

The political leaders have failed either to assimilate the
spirit of reform or to channel it into actions. This is indeed
the greatest delusion. While in other countries significant
changes are easily brought about with even less dramatic
political struggle, here it is business as usual.

The only way out is then to balance it with horizontal
decentralization and autonomy: citizens need to get involved
directly with daily decision making processes.

This can be done by way of public debates both with the
legislative as well as executive bodies; participatory, bottom-up
programming and budgeting; and other forms of participation.

In summary: a more populist democracy. Why not? It is the
'demand' side that needs be made dynamic, not the supply, as this
latter side will only follow the first. Parties will have to make
efforts to prepare better candidates, when the citizens' demand
increases.

The writer is an architect-urbanist.