Letters: Demolition in Kemang

Mon, 05/11/2009 2:55 PM  |  Reader's Forum

Your headline on Kemang residents didn't adequately capture our frustration. After living in Kemang Dalam for 14 years, I am sure the poor planning, environmental degradation and willful ignorance of city rules so evident here will be a cautionary tale to other urban mayors on how development can ruin a neighborhood.

I don't mind the drinkers that are bothering some of our residents, instead I mind the parked cars creating traffic jams, especially since four of the houses along the street where I live have been turned into a school and a mining business office led by a former high-ranking official.

I don't mind the restaurants, I mind the heavy, rumbling construction trucks doing more damage to already poor infrastructure. I echo Irma's question, "Who gave them permits?"

Despite Mayor Widiyo Dwiyono's show of bravado in tearing down small shop-houses, they aren't really the problem.

It is the multi-story buildings with no parking space, it is the new high rises, it is the mega-houses that take up all the land that are creating the disaster that is currently Kemang.

I pray for, long for, wish for the days when Kemang was sleepier, the banana fields still existed and it didn't take 40 minutes to drive less than a kilometer. Under the current admi-nistration, I am pretty sure that my prayers and wishes won't be answered.

Lucy S. Mize
Jakarta

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