Synchronizing development
Jakarta's physical development has once again come under the spotlight of public attention, and for obvious reasons. The capital city of Southeast Asia's largest country, Jakarta, is plagued by a host of problems that threaten its very livability. A solution for most of those problems seems nowhere in sight.
On the contrary, many of them seem to have grown worse over the past several years as settlers from the provinces continue to come streaming in, straining the city's public facilities beyond their limits.
Despite new road construction, traffic problems are getting worse every year as an ever greater number of citizens and commuters opt for driving their own private cars to escape the city's appalling public transportation system. Seasonal floods occur in greater frequency, inundating ever bigger areas of the city as more and more agricultural land in the surrounding West Java hinterland make way for housing developments and golf courses. Clean water -- and clean air for that matter -- is increasingly becoming a valuable commodity.
As in many other developing countries, urbanization is a major headache for Jakarta. Obviously, Jakarta's problems cannot be solved by the Jakarta city administration alone. Unless the effective cooperation of other regions -- especially the surrounding regencies of Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi -- can be ensured, no satisfactory solution is possible.
It is not that this has not been long realized. It is to establish precisely such a cooperation that a special agency to coordinate development programs in Greater Jakarta -- the so- called BKSP Jabotabek -- was created many years ago. As experience has shown, however, the results have been paltry, not to say nil altogether.
To be fair, the blame must not be placed at the BKSP's door. For one thing, the agency's lack of authority to do what it was expected to do -- that is, to coordinate Jakarta's and West Java's diverse development programs -- made its existence practically meaningless. For another, complicated and the time- consuming administrative procedures, not to mention conflicting regional interests, prevented the agency from performing effectively.
Given all this, the recent establishment by the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) of a new coordinating team provides hope that we may in the near future see a better alignment of development efforts in this area. At the very least, it means that the urgency for better coordination has been sufficiently realized.
Basically, the Greater Jakarta idea is designed to lessen the industrialization and urbanization pressures on Jakarta by spreading out development efforts over a wider area. But for this idea to work, effective coordination and synchronization of development efforts is essential. As the floods which hit Jakarta in recent years have so plainly shown us, unrestrained development in the Bogor area can have disastrous consequences for Jakarta.
The fact that various government agencies will be involved, including those in the fields of nature conservation, environment, transportation, as well as national planning and government administration sends out a favorable signal. The fact that the team is headed by a deputy chairman of the National Development Planning Board is another good indication. For the present, the best thing the public can do is to wait and see if the new team will indeed live up to the public's expectations.