Parks languish at priority list bottom

JAKARTA (JP): No wonder parks and fields are difficult to find here: they occupy the lowest priority level in the city's master plan.

Untung Widodo, the head of the Inter-Municipalities Organization (BKS-AKSI), said recently that ideally, more attention should be paid to the provision of green space.

"Our most important needs were initially housing and work places when the government began arranging the master plan 11 years ago," he said, "Green areas had yet to receive more attention."

Now, he urged, other needs should be curbed to make way for green areas. Currently, it is still the other way round: data from the city parks agency shows that 543,907 hectares of green areas are being used for other purposes. Of this, 306,649 hectares alone are in Central Jakarta.

Green space occupies a final ninth position on the 1985 - 2005 master plan's list of "general policies". Numbers 1 to 8 are considerations for population growth, work space, housing, industry, transport, drinking water and water sources, floods and drainage and public facilities, including roads and commercial centers.

Untung said that however important these other factors are, the provision of green space should be possible if rules on changing the master plan are followed consistently.

Green space, in the form of parks and natural or man-made forests, are vital in their role as the city's "lungs" to produce oxygen, besides providing shade for weary traders and pedestrians.

The city, which sprawls across 65,000 hectares, has at least 19,500 hectares of parks and natural or man-made forests.

Student violence has been attributed to a lack of fields to accommodate sports matches. The city's One Million Tree Program is also limited by a lack of space.

In the master plan "open green space" also includes coast conservation and river maintenance, including riverbanks. Maintenance of existing sites and creating new ones in cooperation with the private sector are also on the list.

The city was last recorded to have green space amounting to only 12 percent of its total area, or 7,800 hectares, including 465 small and large parks with a total area of less than 350 hectares.

Many evictions of slum residents have been announced as steps to return the sites to green areas, as marked in the master plan.

But residents are often skeptical, as they point to other vacated areas in which billboards showing high-rise buildings have been erected.

Untung said that based on a decree on the master plan, changes are possible only if both the governor and city council agree.

"But control of their enforcement is in a mess," he said.

Earlier, former director of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, said that many eviction cases indicated practices of changing details of the master plan, or local spatial plans, without agreement between the governor and city council.

"Green areas can be turned into areas for housing or commercial purposes," she said, citing Kampung Sawah in West Jakarta.

Suspicions aside, an important effort to increase green space includes plans for a 15-hectare urban forest and park site in Srengseng, West Jakarta, to be completed next year. This will add to the city's protected areas, which also include the islands and coral reefs of the Seribu Islands.

Aboejoewono, who heads the city's environmental bureau, said that in the new forest, young and old will be able to enjoy bird watching and duck feeding, besides picnicking among the trees.

More promises are in plans for the new town in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, which includes a conservation site for local vegetation and various birds.

Also notable is the greening of cemeteries, aimed at dispelling their ghostly image. The Karet cemetery in South Jakarta is now lined with grass and young trees to replace its former walls.

Another plan is for the reclamation of the city's north coast, which promises to not only increase residential and commercial space, but also improve maintenance of the beach and replant the mangrove forest.

The recent city rule justifying the reclamation was issued in line with the requisite that both the governor and city council agree on changes in master plan.

Untung also said that utmost care is needed when sacrificing vegetation area for building purposes.

"The necessary technology is expensive, and one must be careful in changing the ecology," Untung said. (anr/yns))