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

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Garage sales in Jakarta

In a time when spending and consuming is considered a lifestyle, thanks in part to the unfettered growth of
capitalism, some people will go an extra mile to hunt for a bargain.Garage sales and secondhand markets are alternatives available to many Jakartans who want to get good-quality items at bargain prices. And while hippies and tree huggers may opt for garage sales and going to Salvation Army stores because it contri-butes to saving the environment, many Jakartans do so for entirely different reasons — saving money.

Pride, locally known as gengsi, which is so central to our culture does not come into play in this context.

For Dian Safitri, a public relations consultant, garage sales have become her latest hobby. Dian said she did not mind buying secondhand goods and always found it thrilling to find a bargain.

“I bought a microwave and a sofa for only Rp 1 million [US$110]. I have also bought good-quality carpet, a stove and many other household utensils from garage sales,” Dian told The Jakarta Post recently.

In the past, garage sales were a small and low-key affair enjoyed mostly by a smaller audience, mainly expatriates. They often organize garage sales before moving out of Jakarta and returning to their home countries or relocating to other countries.

Today, however, garage sales are a local affair managed by local people and draw a larger crowd.

Jakarta Garage Sale is a Facebook group set up in July 2009 by a housewife, Inge Bachrens.

In the beginning, she just wanted to do something to chase away the boredom following her resignation from a music distribution company.

“I was not ready to go back to a full-time job as I wanted to spend more time with my kids,” she said.

Inge said that she always loved housecleaning and when she did a spring clean, she came up with the idea of organizing garage sales.

Inge said that she had experience in organizing garage sales years ago, but with a smaller audience of family and friends. Now, her Facebook group and Twitter account has attracted more than 3,300 members and 600 followers respectively.

Her husband, Daniel Tumiwa — whose Twitter feed was the first to break the news about the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott bombing last year — suggested she use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to spread the word about her new activity.

“It proved to be a good decision as we now have a lot of members who offer their goods for us to sell, which makes it more interesting,” she said.

Inge said that her group had organized five events since it started in July last year, four times in 2009 and once last month, in her house in Kemang, South Jakarta.

But some are still too proud to scavenge at garage sales. Admitting that she enjoys the fun of bargain hunting and “competition”, Dian said she makes sure the garage sales only offers first-class quality goods.

She said that her favorite garage sales were those organized by her husband’s employer, an international school in the Pondok Indah area in South Jakarta and another by the Jakarta Garage Sale group.

“The school employs a number of foreigners, which kind of guarantees the quality of their items,” said Dian, who has mainly bought furniture, household goods and toys for her 4-year-old son from the bargain sales.

Shopping at garage sales is also a habit for Fitri Wulandari, a working mom. She recently bought a decent teakwood chair at a store that calls itself an “everyday garage sale” near her home in Bintaro, Tangerang, only for Rp 1 million. She also fell for a nice coffee table and bought it only for Rp 300,000, almost 50 percent less than its store price of Rp 500,000.

“I did not intentionally hunt for secondhand goods, but after checking several stores, we often found good quality items with good price in such stores,” she said.

“I am not a shopping addict, and only buy things when I need them. It’s not only furniture and household goods, I also often go to Pasar Baru [in Central Jakarta] to buy clothes. I bought a lot of winter clothes from there before I left for London for a work-related trip in 2003, as they were so cheap and I knew I wouldn’t use them for too long,” she said.

Inge agreed that bargain hunting remained a main attraction for those that went to garage sales. But when she set up the group for garage sale last year, it was not only for the fun of haggling, but also encouraged people to take more responsibility for their disposables.

“I know it’s impossible to stop people from shopping, but at least we have to be aware of the ‘waste’ they are making,” she said.

“Garage sales are a good way to pass on goods to other people that might value them more than us,” she added.

She added that she also wanted to educate people about the true meaning of garage sales and how to organize them.

“A garage sale simply means selling unwanted stuff [it could be new] in your garage or yard and it’s generally not about the profit,” she said.

Inge said that she was happy with the progress of the group and expected that more would follow in her footsteps.

“It is still a challenge educate people. Some members have contacted me and asked if I could send the items to their addresses, but I explain that they have to come to the event and get the items themselves, this is not an online store,” she explained.

“People should know that going to garage sales is fun,” Inge said, adding that one of her dreams was that Jakarta would someday have a regular Sunday flea market where people would have more options than the mall.

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