Making Jakarta Work

Jakarta and its woes have long been a favorite subject of complaint for all those who live in the city. It’s a daily sport for people to rail against the traffic jams, the disorder, the lack of public services and the garbage, yet we continue to live in a place that is, if we are honest enough to admit it, more alive than most. The big question is: Why can’t we make this confounding city of contrasts a better place to live for all its citizens? Maggie Tiojakin reports.  

In 2007, Jakarta was listed as the world’s 55th most expensive city to live in, based on living expenses in US dollars; a year later, it was named the 82nd most expensive city worldwide, topping such formidable metropolises as Boston and Riyadh. Yet while Indonesia’s capital came in higher on that list than seemingly glitzier and more impressive cities around the world, it has never made the list of the top 100 cities when it comes to the best quality of life.

Not once. Ever.

After visiting a new country, a new city or a new tourist destination, one generally tries to capture the experience with the choicest adjectives.

Words such as “mesmerizing”, “exquisite” or the overly used “beautiful” often come to mind. Whether they are meant to describe a sprawling prairie, a piece of architecture or a culinary dish, these words are uttered and written ceremoniously by travelers who have taken the time to explore certain regions of the world. Some countries, cities and sites are too complex, too vast or too diverse for any one word to neatly and succinctly capture them in their entirety, but, sometimes, one word is all it takes.

For Chan-Sook Choe, a Seoul-based dentist who has had the privilege of visiting Jakarta twice, the word is: “Ironic.”

Choe elaborates on her impressions of Jakarta by noting the rapid development of commercial properties such as malls, condominium towers, offices, hotels and more malls, these grand architectural achievements downtown in contrast to the underdeveloped living spaces (read: slums) and traffic-congested areas in and around the city that make Jakarta undesirable, or difficult to love.

“Usually, I am able to say during my travels that this city is good, or that city is bad,” Choe says by instant messenger. “But it’s not that easy in Jakarta, because you end up really loving some parts of it, and really hating other parts of it.”

Unfortunately, her sentiment is shared by many, including residents of the city. Boasting a population of more than 8 million people, Jakarta sprawls across 661.52 square kilometers with a metropolitan area that qualifies as the sixth largest in the world, according to UNESCO. Not unlike other major cities around the globe, Jakarta is plagued by urbanization issues that mainly revolve around its rising population, inefficient transportation, poor sanitation and abject poverty, to mention a few.

(JP/R. Berto Wedhatama)

As if the beleaguered city were in need of even more problems, climate changes followed by poor anticipatory actions have brought disastrous results to some areas, including severe flooding and lack of clean water. Add to that pollution and poor waste management.

Even so, few – if any – of these issues appear to have discouraged residents and visitors from living or setting up homes in the city; despite the challenges, Jakarta is still the country’s economic, political and cultural center.

“Like any other metropolitan city, or if you want to compare it to Mexico City, [Jakarta] has its problems,” says Melba Pria, the Mexican ambassador to Indonesia. “Traffic is a common denominator in cities of this particular size, as well as pollution; however, it’s not something you can’t overcome.”

A variety of measures have been taken by city officials to combat the problems, but the slow handling of the problems has invited strong criticism from the media and public watchdogs.

In May, a group of regional representatives stated its objections against “uneven development” in Jakarta’s urban and suburban areas, claiming that officials have merely scratched the surface of the city’s infrastructure development while completely abandoning pressing issues of Jakarta’s sociocultural development, which they described as a neglected “stepchild”. They said Jakarta should be equipped with a welfare city design that aims to develop the people as much as the physical urban aspects.

Nevertheless, the precautions taken in one country or region may well be ignored in another. Battling overpopulation and insufficient road systems, most developing countries have adopted new public transportation systems designed to ease the load of traffic and give better access for people to stay mobile during the day, especially in metropolitan areas.

Trams, subways, monorails and express bus lines are among the means of public transportation that, in places such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and New Delhi, have worked to alleviate the gridlock. Jakarta was expecting more or less the same results when, under the governorship of Sutiyoso in 2004, it launched a mega-billion dollar project aptly named TransJakarta.

“TransJakarta was a groundbreaking project,” says Tomas Alfianso, a private contractor who briefly worked on the rapid transit system in 2002 while it was still under construction. “It significantly reduced the amount of illegal transportation in the city and it gives people the option not to take their car to work.”

Designed as an alternative transportation system for local commuters, TransJakarta runs through some of the capital’s most congested areas in its own private lanes, which are meant to increase traffic efficiency. Yet this is a timid, if not downright ineffective, method in a city of more than 3 million cars: Instead of urging people to leave their vehicles at home, it merely upgrades public transportation services for those who were already using public transportation.

“I think [TransJakarta] does make it easier for people to commute in and around the city,” says Tomas. “Though it hasn’t necessarily achieved its goal, I believe it is an exemplary start. First the rapid transit system, and next: our very own monorail.”

Ah, the monorail …

In South Jakarta and other parts of the city, tall, gray pillars jut out of the ground in perfect sync, resembling unfinished sculptures, or grotesque-looking limbs severed by some tragic accident and covered in cement. They are ugly, unlovable remnants of a great idea: the Jakarta Monorail.

After the project began in 2003, speculation began to grow about when it would be finished and how it would look. With the materialization of TransJakarta, people were hopeful of the realization of the city’s first-ever monorail system, even going so far as saying that Jakarta would be as advanced as Kuala Lumpur, or Singapore. By 2006, however, financial issues had seen the project handed over to various stakeholders and developers so many times that hopes of its completion started to waver.

In 2008, five years after the initial “kickoff”, the project was abandoned for good. The pillars are all that’s left.

Taxi driver Setiawan calls them “scars of corruption”. Like many Jakartans, or those who stay in the city for long enough, Setiawan is ambivalent about the state of his hometown. And when asked what he would do – if he were a governor or an influential politician – to “fix” the city, Setiawan ponders on the answer for quite a while.

Then, something seems to flicker inside his head. A smile follows. “A major cleanup,” he says. “I guess it would be nice if we had a river that didn’t smell like a sewer, or a nice normal street that didn’t feel like a dumping site.”

Known for its strict regulations and outrageous fines against the smallest negligence, the city-state of Singapore is widely popular for having clean streets and a spotless transportation system: free of graffiti, blobs of half-chewed gum and those wrinkly food wrappings that we so often find in Jakarta in public places, whether streets, buses or parks. Wherever we turn our heads, it seems, an appalling sight awaits, which – unfortunately – has become a part of the city and, therefore, a part of its residents’ lives.

A running joke among Jakartans goes, “You know the food is delicious when it’s sprinkled with bits of dust.” It implies a fatalistic acceptance of the condition that somehow it is better to live with it than to fight it; when everyone’s in it, no one is any better.

After studying abroad, Eta Suhandi was worried about returning to her hometown because she knew what she had to give up: convenience and a sanitary environment. Having grown accustomed to living conditions in London, where she stayed for three years completing her master’s degree in linguistics, Eta’s reluctance was perceived by her friends in Jakarta as a rich kid’s dilemma rather than a valid concern.

“I knew it wasn’t something I could change or alter,” says Eta. “Jakarta is dirty and heavily polluted and inconvenient on so many levels, but if one chooses to live here, one would have to just” – she shrugs – “suck it up, basically.”

Five years, a marriage and two kids later, Eta has been doing exactly that. Today, she doesn’t leave her house without a bottle of water, a pack of wet tissues and a small container of dry soap, as if she were going spelunking – all the time. It’s the urban survival kit of many Jakartans on their long commutes around the city.

Perhaps, for this reason, Jakartans are famous, in a number of circles, for being highly adaptable individuals. Give them a flood, they’ll make a pool out of it; give them fire, they’ll have a cookout; give them a typhoon, they’ll fly with their wings outstretched while staring wide-eyed into the face of God – or so the joke goes. Sure, it’s preposterous, but is there truth to it?

“Well, you have to have a sense of humor when you live in a city this absurd,” says Angga Dikin, a freelance photographer born and raised in Jakarta. “I don’t know if we are as adaptable as we think we are, but when you’re left with no other option than to accept things the way they are, I believe any people [not just Jakartans] would have done the same. They would have adapted.”

To what?

“The floods, the traffic, the poverty, the crazy weather,” says Angga. “Even the way people do business here, or the way we live and think and look at the world. It comes from decades of adapting to things.”

Nearly 13 years have passed since the first major flood crippled the city in 1996. In its wake, two other major floods have had significantly greater impacts on Jakarta’s urban centers and communities. As a result, more projects have been signed into effect, but with little signs of improvement. Thus, acting on their own initiative to keep their feet dry, Jakartans rush to get their hands on new properties, or rebuild the ones they already own on higher ground, or in taller towers. And, as expected, a large number of property ads – if not all – now use the mantra “flood-free” in their marketing campaigns to attract flood-fatigued citizens who can’t afford to wait until the next flood hits.

But what of life itself in Jakarta? Is it any better?

“I first came to Jakarta 15 years ago,” says Setiawan, while driving through the Sudirman area a good 30 minutes before the rush hour starts. “I worked as a mail courier and wanted to be a big boss someday. Now, 15 years later, I work as a taxi driver with the dream of being a big boss someday.”

He cocks his head to one side, considering the towering office buildings whose windows are illuminated by the afternoon sun, producing a glimmering effect. “But the rich get richer, though,” he says with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “So that’s a positive sign, right?”

Near the end of the chatting session, Choe mentions another point that leads her to the conclusion that Jakarta is full of contradictions: “What’s with the malls, anyway? I think with all the money you put into those malls, you could actually help people get better education and healthcare.”

Uh, sure. But where’s the irony in that?

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