'New city' provides houses and jobs, BSD official says

JAKARTA (JP): Problems such as flooding and traffic jams, which are partly the results of the sporadic development of greater Jakarta, are the main reason for the development of a "new city."

Head of the Public Relations Department of PT Bumi Serpong Damai, Johannes Tulung, said Saturday many real estate developers only providing good facilities, including roads and water ducts, within the housing complexes they build.

"But the developers have failed to provide facilities which can be helpful in preventing floods, for example, as most of them tend to rely on the government to provide such facilities," Johannes told reporters in Serpong, Tangerang.

He added that such developers were partly responsible for the frequent occurrences of traffic jams and flooding around their complexes.

Johannes explained that developers tended to build housing complexes on the outskirts of greater Jakarta because the price of land in those areas was relatively cheap.

But this causes problems, he said, because the facilities in those areas, such as roads and water ducts, are only sufficient for the areas concerned and have not been designed to accommodate a large number of people.

In other words, Johannes said, the facilities in housing areas are not integrated with the ones which have been already built, nor are they integrated with city planning.

He said the concept of developing a "new city" had also been influenced by the fact that currently people wanted to buy houses in complexes which provided superb facilities which would not cause various problems in the future, such as traffic jams and flooding.

The "new city" concept is that of a self-contained city within the city, as, for example, Bumi Serpong Damai is part of Tangerang city, which consists of not only residential areas but also of a central business district and industrial estates.

"The city is not only providing houses but also jobs," Johannes said.

Johannes said that the "new city" concept would enable developers to implement cross subsidies for the construction of houses according to the "1:3:6" formula required by the government. Under the requirement, a developer must build six medium or low-cost residences and three medium-cost residences for each luxury residence they build.

"It is easily applied (in a "new city"), compared with in other places, such as the upcoming waterfront city because the reclamation technology is very expensive (in the case of the waterfront city project) and it will be almost impossible to apply the cross subsidy concept," Johannes said.

The "new city" being developed by PT Bumi Serpong Damai is the biggest in the country and is to include a residential area, a central business district and an industrial estate in its 6,000 hectares in Serpong, Tangerang.

Currently, the company has developed about 1,000 hectares of land. About 8,847 houses have been built. The developer plans to start building the business center and the industrial park next year. (yns)