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Jakartans and malls: Misconstrued love affair?
For college student Syifa Fatimah Azzahra, who was born, raised and grew up in Jakarta with a fondness for malls, shopping complexes have always been her go-to place to seek solace or to find whatever she needs
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or college student Syifa Fatimah Azzahra, who was born, raised and grew up in Jakarta with a fondness for malls, shopping complexes have always been her go-to place to seek solace or to find whatever she needs.
She recalled that her parents often took her to Cilandak Town Square, known colloquially as Citos, and Pondok Indah Mall, or PIM, located respectively 5 and 7 kilometers from her home in Pasar Minggu and the pinnacle of South Jakarta's shopping centers in the late 1990. A third mall, Pejaten Village, opened in the area only as Syifa entered junior high school and in a location much closer to her house.
Today, shopping malls are almost as ubiquitous as convenience stores and found at every major junction, attracting visitors with their rows of shops, air-conditioned spaces and sales festivals. Some have earned special monikers from the public, like "Sency" for Senayan City Mall, "Kokas" for Kota Kasablanka Mall and the aforementioned Citos and PIM.
The city is currently home to 84 shopping malls and 39 trade centers, according to property consulting company Colliers International. Malls have also mushroomed in its satellite cities to total 186 shopping centers in Greater Jakarta, comprising 130 malls and 56 trade centers. Colliers defines shopping malls as tenanted commercial buildings, while trade centers offer retail spaces for sale.
Nearly 200 shopping destinations, and yet four new malls are to open in South Jakarta: Senayan Park, Mall at District 8, AEON Mall Southgate Tanjung Barat and Pondok Indah Mall 3 (PIM 3).
In 2011, then-governor Fauzi Bowo issued a temporary moratorium on retail properties, but this was not enforced by law, so developers have continued to build sprawling shopping centers.
According to the head of the Indonesian Shopping Center Association, Alexander Stefanus Ridwan, 10,000 to 30,000 people visit a Jakarta mall every day. This figure generally increased on weekends for popular malls to reach 65,000 to 100,000 people per day, he said.
Jakartans habitually find themselves at a mall, although some shopping centers are suffering a dearth of customers owing to fierce competition with newer retail spaces and the growing popularity of online shopping.
Meli Agustine, 23, who works at a digital marketing agency in Kuningan, South Jakarta, said she visits a mall every day. “I go to Lotte Shopping Avenue for lunch, a seven-minute walk from my office,” she said.
Malls offer more than just shopping nowadays. They also have supermarkets, restaurants, bars, karaoke outlets, cinemas, bookstores, gardens and playgrounds, as well as fitness gyms and ice skating rinks. Others have salons, dentists, libraries, arcades, water parks, indoor play centers and even mosques and churches. Some malls are even integrated with an apartment, hotel or office building.
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“There, interactions are not natural but created in such a way to push consumption. Experience is a part of what they sell.”
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The popularity of retail centers may also stem from the fact that Jakartans do not have many alternatives for spending their leisure time, since the capital still struggles to meet the required 30 percent of green spaces.
But first and foremost, air conditioners might be the primary selling point of shopping centers amid Jakarta’s scorching heat and choking air pollution.
Unlike Syifa and Meli, 23-year-old private employee Dian Larasati said she was not a big fan of malls. But she liked taking long walks along Jakarta’s streets and shopping centers provided shelter when she got tired of walking or from the heat. “[They're] easy to find and have AC!” she laughed.
People-watching was a plus, said Dian, referring to the diverse people that could be seen frequenting any mall on any given day. She added that she could wear anything she wanted to a mall, without fearing catcalls or that people might stare at her.
Elisa Sutanudjaja, the executive director of the Rujak Center for Urban Studies, however, said that the security and freedom women might feel in malls was false.
“Danger awaits the moment they step outside. Real safety does not come from CCTV [cameras] or guards or the police, but from a community that cares about each other,” Elisa said, noting that the security checks done at mall entrances was part and parcel of the mall concept as a commercial entity.
Although the doors of most retail centers are open to visitors of all backgrounds, some retail developers seem to be playing to each social class with shopping malls and centers built with a target market in mind.
Elisa said retail centers were "a pseudo public space", meaning that they were publicly accessible venues that were owned and managed by private companies.
“There, interactions are not natural but created in such a way to push consumption. Experience is a part of what they sell,” she said.
Elisa said that many people believed that Jakartans only go to malls because they were not aware of how many visited other, true public spaces like the city's 200-plus parks. The Jakarta History Museum in Kota Tua, for example, saw 5,000 to 11,000 visitors each day.
“So Kota Tua probably sees around 50,000 visitors a day, since there are at least five museums in the area,” she said. (aly)
