Letter: Floods not only engineering issue

While Scott Younger’s article on Jakarta city development (“Quo vadis Jakarta city development”, The Jakarta Post, Jan. 7) undoubtedly raises some interesting possibilities in regard to mitigating Jakarta’s annual floods, we should be wary of speaking of such problems as if they were mostly to be resolved through engineering solutions. 

It makes the problem sound far too easy. City development issues are a question of planning. In turn, planning is determined by the political system in which it is found.  

In fairness to the very worthy sentiments of Younger and his excellent work with the National Planning Agency, and while I am sure he is aware of these matters, I always feel uneasy when I read of ideas to fix problems that are entirely decontextualized from the real underlying problems, such as the way we are governed and the way resources are distributed in society.  

In the early 20th century British planner Ebenezer Howard proposed similar solutions to Younger, albeit not in engineering terms, but in terms of self-contained sub-city communities.  Howard’s so-called “Garden Cities” around London ultimately failed, at least in their fundamental principles of self-governance and self-containment.  

This was not because they were bad planning ideas, but rather because they were not planned well enough.  The political system of the time ensured that market forces overrode lofty planning aspirations. Does that sound familiar?  

If we are to even approach a solution to Jakarta’s annual flooding debacle, we should turn our attention not to purely engineering solutions, as appealing as they may be, but to rampant development around Puncak in Bogor, West Java, to the continuing development of natural water sinks for golf courses and shopping plazas, and to the inappropriately located new towns on the urban fringe.  

All of these examples are the result of a neoliberal approach to city development.  That is a choice that has been made for a particular political system.

What is required is strong, democratic and socialistic government to genuinely plan further development of a city such as Jakarta and to enshrine a society based on the redistribution
of wealth.

That’s a long way from an “engineering solution”, but that’s the task we face.    

Anthony Kent
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia