Hundreds of people are scheduled to gather at Bung Karno Sports Complex today and tomorrow to commemorate World Town Planning Day. This is amid a continuing disappearance of open and green space, in Jakarta and elsewhere, greedily used for housing and commercial facilities.
Despite beautiful slogans from Jakarta administration, promising us it will not allow designated green spaces to be sacrificed for economic purposes, experience has shown us our green spaces are dwindling fast.
The disappearance of open and green spaces has a close relationship with the current conditions in Jakarta, such as hotter weather during the day, increased flooding during the rainy season, water scarcity during the dry season etc.
We can only hope the city's policy makers will use the event - which falls on Nov. 8 - to contemplate the degradation of the city environment caused by violations of the existing spatial planning law through overdevelopment - whereby green spaces, lakes, wetland areas and rice fields have been covered in concrete.
At present, Jakarta's open and green spaces cover less than 10 percent of the city's 650-square-kilometer territory - far less than 30 percent required by the 2007 Spatial Planning Law. Sadly, this situation is the result of more than two decades of failures.
In the spatial planning bylaw for 1965-85, the city aimed to set aside 37.2 percent of the city for open and green spaces. This was revised in the 1985-2005 city spatial planning bylaw, to 25.85 percent. And then, because of excessive development, this target was revised again in the 2005-2010 bylaw, to just 13.94 percent. Unfortunately, even though the administration has reduced its green-space target several times, it has still failed to meet it.
Rampant violations of the spatial planning bylaw can be seen in the use of land at Bung Karno Sports complex, which was originally intended for sports facilities and open space only. The area is now partly overrun with commercial areas, apartments, office blocks and shopping centers. We have also seen the clearing of wetland areas in North Jakarta to make way for luxury housing estates.
Currently, the Jakarta administration is formulating a draft of bylaws on spatial planning, which is expected to be approved by the Jakarta Legislative Council early next year. We truly hope that this time the administration will find ways to set aside the required 30 percent of land for open and green spaces, as stated in the existing law.
From time to time, the city demolishes buildings that are in violation of its spatial planning bylaws. But what is much more important is that the administration will no longer issue building permits in areas where land has been allocated for open and green spaces - because most of the damage done was caused by city administration officials compromising these rules.
As a bureaucrat of nearly 30 years, Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo knows this, and has made his own contribution to the past mistakes of his predecessors. As the number one person in the city, Fauzi has an opportunity to do something to prevent such mistakes from happening again - that is, if he really is committed. The only question is when he will deliver on these commitments.
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