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Move smarter, breathe easier: Recipe for a global city
Smart mobility is the way to go for Jakarta to achieve its vision as a clean, comfortable and accessible global city while serving as an exemplary model for other cities to follow suit and contribute to a sustainable, prosperous Indonesia.
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Motorists sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic on March 19, 2024 along Jl. Gatot Subroto in Jakarta, around a week after the fasting month of Ramadan began. (Antara/Erlangga Bregas Prakoso)
There are two primary challenges facing Jakarta in its journey to becoming a global city: environment and mobility.
According to the Global Power City Index (GPCI) 2023, Jakarta placed 45th out of 48 major cities assessed, only above Johannesburg, Cairo and Mumbai. GPCI was developed by the Institute for Urban Strategies (IUS) at the Mori Memorial Foundation and is often referenced by cities around the world, including Jakarta (Jakarta Smart City, 2024).
The index’s dimensions include economy, livability, research and development, environment and accessibility, where Jakarta's best indicator is livability, ranking 25th. Meanwhile, the city ranks worst in environment at 47th and accessibility, also at 47th.
Clearly, our main challenge to becoming a global city is in these two fundamentals: How we breathe and how we move.
Tragically, Jakarta and air pollution have been spoken in the same breath far too many times. The Health Ministry has revealed a surge in respiratory infections in Jakarta due to air pollution, reaching 200,000 cases in 2023, four times larger than during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, research conducted in 2022 by Lestari et al. states that the transportation sector is the second-largest contributor of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Jakarta. On top of that, Jakarta's transportation infrastructure is struggling to cope with the city’s rapid growth, leading to severe traffic congestion.
The noticeable interconnection between these problems shows how solving mobility issues will contribute hugely to solving Jakarta’s environmental issues, especially air quality, and boost its current impediment to becoming a global city.
