Unsustainable city design

The city's jumbled layout of slums, housing estates, business districts and tangled roads exacerbate future
floods, congestion and uncivilized living.
Architect Ridwan Kamil of Urbane Indonesia said unlike other major cities in the world, Jakarta's layout carries no distinct form as areas grew according to loose plans post-colonial period, resulting in a weakly integrated city.

"Superblocks with more structure have grown in the past 10 years," said Ridwan, who was interviewed by The Jakarta Post in conjunction with the city's 483rd anniversary.

He added that the focus should be on ameliorating already existing areas such as by tearing down dilapidated buildings to create parks.

Jakarta developed rapidly during the Soeharto regime as the economy grew and financed the many business districts, which continue to attract migrants to work here. The population increase is coupled by an increase in both poor and elite residential areas.

"I imagine that Jakarta's horizontal development will increasingly eat up green areas and turn Jakarta into a concrete city," said architect Budi Pradono.

The reason behind the chaos, he said, was due to the government's poor planning that relies on short-term fixes instead of long-term solutions for the city's greatest problems, and a lack of integrated infrastructure, housing facilities and adequate utilities.

Transportation infrastructure, he added, was inefficient. Public transportation routes fail to link areas.

"With more people buying private vehicles there is worsening congestion," he said.

Office buildings, too, are not integrated since they stand alone, causing even more inefficiency, he said.

"Separate office buildings could link with cross bridges and tunnels where workers quickly move from one place to another to do business," he said. "The bridges' cost is relatively cheap compared to the benefits."

Jakarta's housing infrastructure, where the poor are forced to live in slums, distant suburbs or ill-equipped low-cost apartments while the rich live in gated communities and expensive apartments, could potentially cause a social rift as citizens become greater divided.

"The low-cost apartments are incredibly small and some are placed far from city centers," he said. "In fact, the closer they are, the faster the economic wheel can turn, since people can move easily at a relatively low cost to their work places."

He said Jakarta's expanding population received less support from key utilities including electricity and water that flows through narrow pipes. Environmentally, unsustainable structures further add pressure to the land's resources.

"Superblocks that combine offices, hotels and apartments extract great volumes of water, hollowing the ground beneath," he said.

Meanwhile, urban planner and researcher at Green Impact Indonesia, Gunawan Tanuwidjaja, said unsustainable development projects, such as reclaiming wetlands in Jakarta's north for housing estates, makes the city increasingly flood-prone. The concrete buildings weigh on the soft, erosive soil, causing it to sink to lower than below sea-level.

"The land is sinking at an average rate of 10 centimeters per year, which means that in 20 years, parts of Jakarta will have sunk approximately 2 meters," he said. "The areas that may sink include those in Kapuk and Kelapa Gading in North Jakarta."

He added that polders, which are low-lying lands protected by dikes that allow water to be pumped out, could be built to mitigate flood threats.

Affordable housing should be built instead of malls, while green areas such as the Srengseng City Forest in South Jakarta must be protected.

The administration is in the midst of drafting the spatial plan for 2010 to 2030, which will determine how the city's space will be managed.

It has come under fire from many groups for failing to accommodate citizen participation, and with rising suspicion that policies will only financially benefit developers and the administration