I

was recently caught in a gridlock just outside the small city of Pasuruan, East Java, for more than an hour. None of the vehicles moved. I wound down my car window and asked the policeman standing by the road what the problem was.

He smiled wistfully and said “It’s a traffic jam, normal!”. I couldn’t help wonder why this city of 186,000 people could suffer from traffic problems. It was just like sitting on the city toll road in Jakarta when there is an accident and there is a total standstill.

The results of the 2010 census show that 57.5 percent of Indonesia’s 237 million people live on the Island of Java. That means 130 million people live on this island, which is the fifth largest island in Indonesia and only one seventh of the country’s total land area. Out of this 130 million people, 70 percent live in urban environments.

As a kid, I traveled through the country side of Java regularly and remember clearly that from one small city to another, there were plains of green rice fields.

During harvest time, carpets of yellow rice fields were filled with groups of people gathered to collect the rice. It was always a comforting scene and an enduring image.

What is taking place in small cities like Pasuruan and other cities on Java, is unplanned urbanization that is growing at a very fast rate, and their urban sprawls are meeting the urban sprawl of the next city.

Hence small city centers are linked to one another around Java by the urban sprawl, which is moving as fast as water and engulfing fertile rice lands. The census results in 2025 may in fact state the City of Java as the largest city on Earth.

Java is always managed in terms of the six provinces it has and not in its totality, which reduces the size of the problem instantly by dividing it into different administrative sections. Yet these provincial boundaries remain on paper only.

The 130 million human beings can move easily from one end of the island to the other without being concerned about provincial boundaries. These people will move to where there is employment, education, health services and economic growth, and will not be deterred by administrative divisions.

The more the population on Java increases, the higher the mobility, pushed by competition to gain access to a better life. Areas where there is slow economic growth will experience outward migrations and there will be intense and increasing pressure where economic growth is taking place. The results will be a gap between rich and poor places within Java — and this is already occurring.

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) has found that the rate of urbanization in developing countries is taking place much faster than in developed countries.

It estimates that by 2050, urban population growth in developing countries will be 93 percent.

Unfortunately, this urban growth also brings with it urban dwellers living in slum conditions. Many city governments around the world are lacking the necessary resources and policy priorities to meet this rapid urbanization currently taking place.

Prosperity will only happen in the cities where governments are tackling the complexities of urbanization seriously and professionally.

Performances of cities are now being benchmarked by the international business community, who are always seeking the best place to invest.

The fact that in the last eight years there were 173 regional heads involved in corruption and 70 percent have been charged does not help Indonesia attract business.

Investors will only invest in healthy and strong cities. There are three Indonesian cities that have attracted international attention.

The Economist Intelligence Unit in London this year issued its annual report “Hot spots: Benchmarking global cities competitiveness”. Three Indonesian cities made it into the Asia-Pacific regional rank, Jakarta ranked 24th out of 44, Surabaya ranked 40th and Bandung ranked 43rd.

The Brookings Institution in Washington has also issued its annual ranking of cities called “Global MetroMonitor 2011”.

The report bases its analyses on per capita GDP (income) and employment changes in the 2010 to 2011 period for 200 of the world’s largest metropolitan economies. Jakarta was ranked 17th and obtained this very good ranking from the business and financial services, manufacturing and trade and tourism.

According to the Brookings Institution, Jakarta managed to create an increase of 5.5 percent in income change and 3 percent growth in employment.

There is a new international focus in managing urbanization. City mayors and leaders have been meeting internationally to share their experiences and best practices with each other. They believe that cities carry the potential of being engines of economic growth, a key to poverty eradication.

In order to tap into this economic potential, cities can no longer be managed as an appendage to provinces or central governments. City governments are the front liners who deal directly with the people of a country.

Indonesia must start reformulating the way the different levels of governments deal with each other.

What use is it for central and provincial governments to have a perfect education or health policy on paper, when in reality the implementation is done directly by city governments that have not been asked to participate in its formulation?

The result has been a mismatch of interests and this economic potential is not accessed. Indonesian leaders must start thinking out the box, be more creative and inspiring in the way they are leading this country in order that prosperity is delivered.

The writer, a former journalist, is secretary-general of the Indonesian Community for Democracy (KID). She was a recipient of the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard University, in the class of 1994.