Mayor says city will buy land in Condet soon

Mayor says city will buy land in Condet soon

JAKARTA (JP): The city office of the Ministry of Agriculture
will soon buy land in the Condet area to preserve Betawi culture.

East Jakarta Mayor Soedarsono said yesterday the mayoralty
would appropriate eight hectares of land in the Balekambang
subdistrict.

The land in the Kramatjati district, Soedarsono said, would
then be redistributed to locals with land use status. The locals
were expected to build homes in the Betawi, or native Jakartan,
architectural style. They will also be expected to maintain the
area as a water catchment area.

"Fruit trees in the area should not be removed," Soedarsono
said.

The purchase of land by the city would ensure owners could
neither sell their land or be removed from it, he added.

Balekambang is the last of three subdistricts designated by
the city in the early 1970s as preservation areas for the fruits
and plants native to Jakarta.

Uncontrolled development led to the failure of the
preservation project. Condet was also designated a Betawi
architecture preservation area.

Failure to prevent rapid changes to land and buildings here
led the office in charge of preserving Betawi culture to urge the
city to buy up the land.

Deputy Governor for Economic and Development Affairs Tb. M.
Rais said the city planned to buy 40 hectares but given financial
constraints, would buy land in several stages.

The mayor would not give land prices or details of who would
be entitled to the land.

He only said there were two conditions for building on the
land. Homes must be built in the Betawi style and buildings could
not cover more than 20 percent of the plot.

On Friday residents said they were happy to hear the city
plans but said they came far too late. The city rule of building
only on 20 percent of a plot had long been ignored.

The city should have bought the land when it designated Condet
a Betawi culture preservation area, residents told Kompas last
week.

A local leader, Anjung, 51, said many people had built homes
without Betawi features and had not been punished.

Wisnu Murti Arjo, an expert at the city's building and
renovation center, told the Friday meeting of Condet's Betawi
community that the city chose architecture as the main aspect of
Betawi culture to preserve as it was the most visible and could
last to up to 40 years.

He said there were 10 Betawi features that people could apply
to their homes, including fences, windowsills, the roof and
poles.

The number of Jakartans with Betawi blood is estimated at 2.5
million of Jakarta's official nine million population. (11)