Jakarta: From humble harbor to modern metropolis
Jakarta: From humble harbor to modern metropolis
Everybody would like to have an apartment here as Jakarta is
known to be a city of a thousand dreams. Like a loving mother,
Jakarta embraces thousands of people each day with open arms. It
is for this reason that to everyone who has lived here Jakarta is
Ibu Kota (the mother city).
The continuous flow of newcomers is not made up of only
tourists, but also immigrants who stay permanently or come as
visiting musiman (migrants).
From a humble harbor a thousand years ago, Jakarta has grown
into a sprawling metropolis with many attractions. It is the
uncontested center of wealth and power in modern Indonesia,
seducing the talented but also the unemployed from every corner
of the country.
Here, age-old villages share borders with newly created,
affluent suburbs, modern office and shopping centers, industrial
estates, government buildings, universities, churches and mosques
-- all of which stand in great contrast to life elsewhere in the
archipelago.
It would not be an exaggeration to conclude that Jakarta is
also center stage for Asia's development in the 21st century. Yet
another reason why everyone wants to stay here.
For those who enjoy the tropics Jakarta is further blessed
with a comfortable temperature of 27 degrees Celsius. Pleasant
sea breezes waft through the city at all times and due to its
proximity to the equator, Jakarta is showered gently with
monsoons for almost half the year, with skies remaining blue even
at the peak of the rainy season.
People from around the world have made Jakarta their home;
from Arabs, Indians, Chinese since the ancient times to Europeans
and Americans, too.
Throughout the centuries of colonization the Dutch
concentrated intensively on Java and the great majority of
Indonesia's industries and educational institutions have always
been located here.
Most of the wealth of the archipelago is still drawn to
Jakarta especially, and the island is very receptive today to all
the technological changes taking place in the world.
People come here to fulfill their dreams but they often add to
the city's mounting problems. City administrators battle each day
with mounting pressure to provide services to an ever-swelling
city for housing, transport and jobs.
According to statistics, more than 10 million residents live
and work in an area of about 650 square kilometers, with the
average population density more than 10,000 per sq km. The center
of the city has a higher density rate.
Over the last few decades, the population here has doubled and
is expected to increase to over 18 million soon.
However, efforts are being made to prevent this number from
exceeding 12 million.
The current population explosion threatens Jakarta's previous
infrastructure and its natural resources are groaning under the
pressure of too many mouths to feed and too many bodies to
accommodate.
The demand for water is too high, and it is a matter of great
concern.
Only about 50 percent is piped by the city. The rest comes
from privately owned wells which tap a water table fed from the
mountains to the south. Groundwater is clearly depleting fast,
allowing salt water to seep into the coastal aquifers which act
as important underground sponges.
A large majority of people continue to call plastic shelters
and garbage dumps their home.
Although Jakarta was always an important port city, it was not
always so glitzy or crowded.
The first settlements were huts made by hand with mud floors
and split bamboo walls.
The vernacular homes were constructed from wood and other
perishable organic material, making even the oldest indigenous
building in Java not more than 150 years old.
The present day capital city got its name the day after
Muslims from Demak and Cirebon captured the Hindu port of Sunda
Kelapa in the early 16th century and renamed it Jayakarta or
victory city.
The Dutch came later, demolished it all and called it Batavia
instead. They modeled it after cities back in Holland, laying out
a fortified settlement made of concrete with a rudimentary street
plan in 1619.
The walled town was bisected by the river Ciliwung, which was
channeled into a straight canal running into the interior of
Jakarta southwards. Around 1730, Batavia was a wealthy metropolis
with some 20,000 townspeople of various nationalities within the
city walls and another 100,000 outside.
Sir John Barrow, secretary to the British Admiralty, stopped
by a few years later and found it among the neatest and
handsomest cities in the world.
Having fortified Batavia as a center of trade and
commerce, the Dutch turned their attention to the surrounding
countryside, which they explored and subsequently developed for
the cultivation of sugar and later coffee.
Land was bought outside the city walls and developed into
country residences, ranging from simple dwellings using local
material to grandiose mansions in the European manner.
Canals were constructed to irrigate the land, facilitate the
transport of agricultural produce and to drive the water mills
that operated the sugar presses.
By the beginning of the 19th century, the city looked
dilapidated and unhealthy and a new town center further inland,
now known as Lapangan Banteng and Medan Medeka, was developed.
It was not until the end of the 19th century, after forced
cultivation was abolished, that a rapid development of private
enterprises in the Dutch Indies took place.
Numerous trading companies and financial institutions
established themselves in Java, managing plantations, oil fields
and mines.
International trade with Europe and other parts of the world
boomed, and the corresponding increase in the volume of shipping
led to the construction of a new harbor at Tanjung Priok between
1877 and 1883.
This was also the time when many rural Javanese left their
kampong homes and moved to the city to find work, resulting in a
great demand for housing, and land prices soared.
New houses were often built closely packed together with
kampong settlements filling the spaces in between.
This was the start of the feverish burst of development and
building that continues to this day.
The tragedy is that there seems to be little regard for
tropical conditions, resulting in too many people living too
close together in houses with poor sanitation and no public
amenities.
These circumstances provide an ideal breeding ground for
diseases and in 1913 the island was pockmarked with a plague.
The city has expanded enormously in the last 50 years. During
the 1970s the story of the economic boom started following an
increase in world oil prices.
In the private sector, Indonesia's newly acquired affluence
was reflected in bourgeois indulgences when row upon row of
pseudo-classical villas, with Greek or Roman columns, and
futuristic capsule houses mushroomed in areas that were once
orchards, rubber plantations or lush rice fields.
The district of Kebayoran Baru in South Jakarta was the first
new housing project initiated by the Dutch after retaking
Indonesia from the Japanese.
Conceived as a satellite of the city, Kebayoran Baru was
intended to provide housing facilities for government employees.
The private sector was also allowed to participate in the
scheme in order to create variety.
In the fascinating volume titled Architecture, part of the
Indonesian Heritage series, it is mentioned that the project was
notable for the involvement of local architect Susilo, a former
assistant to the Dutch urban designer, Thomas Karsten. Especially
interesting at this time was the mass housing for low-ranking
government employees and apartments for middle-ranking officials.
The higher officials were provided with accommodation with
terraces and a detached unit distinguished by its sloping walls
and skewed columns.
This distinctive style of architecture was popularly named the
Yankee style, giving birth later to the Villa style, popular
among private house builders.
The story of Jakarta's housing is not over yet as thousands of
residents still wait to find decent homes here.(Mehru Jaffer)