During the Special Summit of the DKI Jakarta Provincial House of Representatives to commemorate the four hundred eighty-first anniversary of the founding of the capital city and attended by the governors of provinces in Java and Sumatra as well as the ambassadors from its sister cities, the hope was expressed that Jakarta become a model for other cities in Indonesia.

 

Tokyo, one of Jakarta’s sister cities, has been and continues to be confronted with a number of issues that can be utilized as learning lessons for Jakarta. More than a century ago, Tokyo (“Eastern Capital”) had a population of over one million people.  Despite having endured almost total destruction twice - once during an earthquake in 1923 and again as a result of American bombings during 1945, Tokyo has continued to grow into one of the largest and most densely populated cities in the world.  Over a quarter of Japanese population resides today in Tokyo which encompasses an area containing only two percent of the landmass of Japan.

Tokyo is the headquarters’ city to sixty-six percent of Japanese corporations.  Thirty percent of Japan’s Gross National Product is derived from the city as is sixty percent of Japanese stock exchange trading.  As the center of Japanese cultural, economic and political life, Tokyo is the engine that drives the whole country.  The city is geographically located on an earthquake belt, making the city prone to natural disasters.

 

With its large and growing population, a scarcity of land and housing, and very heavy traffic, Tokyo has reached a number of  maximum thresholds.  The price of land in Tokyo has become too expensive.  In the city center, the economic price of land is now at  US$200,000 per meter-square.  Individuals can no longer afford to buy residential flats.  Since the most favored Japanese companies are located in Tokyo, it has become the primary destination for workers.   Consequently, companies establish their corporate headquarters in Tokyo to gain access to the highly-talented labor pool residing in the city. Since Tokyo faces serious issues, many observers predict Tokyo may encounter a grave future ahead unless these issues are properly identified and addressed.

Two decades ago, there was a serious effort to identify a breakthrough solution to the city’s problems.  Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita proclaimed that the decentralization of Tokyo was to be among the most important priorities during his term in office.  The Prime Minister supported a program which was to focus upon addressing the “diseases” of Tokyo. The name of this program was “Furosato”, which means “back to the rural areas”.  The first dramatic step made by Takeshita was to require every important ministry and directorate offices to move away from Tokyo to other cities.  Initially, two hundred ninety of the ”important” ministry and directorate offices agreed to move out of Tokyo.  After several months, that list shrank to seventy directorate offices that were considered “not very important”.  Near the end of the program, only “unimportant” directorate offices, such as the “Environmental Protection Against Coal Mining” and the “Research Institutes for Beer Factories” agreed to  move from the city.

In the end, not one important ministry or directorate office left Tokyo.  The reason given for this lack of compliance was that moving from Tokyo would only bring new problems.  The argument was that today, when people needed to take care of their affairs and paperwork in a number of different directorate offices, it was more convenient for them to do it all at once in one city.  But if  these ministry and directorate offices were later to be moved to different cities, people would be required to travel all over Japan to be able to conduct their affairs with various government offices.

The strongest opposition to this decentralization came from the Tokyo metropolitan government and governor.  As a possible solution, the Governor of Tokyo suggested the construction of two giant canals, designed in the shape of a circle, passing through the city with 7,000 small man-made, tree-planted islands.  This solution was intended to “maintain the concentration of the best Japanese human resources and corporations”.

 

While the urban development plans for Tokyo were piling up, the population of Tokyo kept increasing.  Within the past thirty-six months, approximately 10,000 companies have moved their headquarters from other Japanese cities into Tokyo.

What then are the lessons that Jakarta can take from Tokyo?   Jakarta, like Tokyo, could begin to dress up, particularly in city-wide cleanliness, greening the city landscape, and increasing the availability of public transportation.  Just as important, residential housing could be better organized and made more available, especially to lower-middle class dwellers.

 

In a certain respect, Jakarta has already contracted the some of the same “diseases” as Tokyo.  Skyscrapers are springing up everywhere across the city.  Numerous overhead passes are being constructed reflecting a tendency of Jakarta to be a megalopolis through  intertwining its surrounding cities and suburbia into a “Jabodetabek” (Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi) or a “Jabopuncur” (Jakarta, Bogor, Puncak, and Cianjur).

Similar to Tokyo, Jakarta has plundered its agricultural land for utilization as new residential housing, industrial areas, roads and dams.  If this trend persists, Jakarta will not have any traditional agricultural land within the next five years.

 

In terms of population growth, Jakarta has been trailing Tokyo.  The rate of population growth in Jakarta is 1,000-1,500 people per day.  As with Tokyo, Jakarta has become very attractive to many people.  It is the center for culture, business and politics of Indonesia.  Currency circulation in the capital city is estimated to be more than sixty percent of the country’s total currency circulation.  All government departments and ministry head offices are located in Jakarta. In short, the wheel of Indonesian government turns in Jakarta.  Important cultural centers and experts are also concentrated in this city.

Wealthy Tokyo may continue to thrive despite its current issues.  However, this situation is not capable of being maintained in Jakarta.  The most important lesson to be learned from Tokyo is that Jakarta should not follow Tokyo’s footsteps in creating “diseases” by becoming a megalopolis.

 

Over the past five years, the smaller cities surrounding Jakarta have been inseparable from the capital city.  The conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes in Jakarta has reached a critical level to the extent that it will disrupt national long-term food provisioning.  The balance of water ecosystem has become aggravated. Also environmental and air pollution, traffic jams, housing scarcity and human resources problems will quickly become unsolvable if there is no immediate efforts to successfully confront and effectively address these issues.  For example, it has been projected that  future requirements for clean water will not be met if urban development planning places financial investment ahead of environmental preservation.

The effective management of both natural and human resources are of vital concern in the urban planning for Jakarta.  It is also important to continue to increase the socio-economics attractiveness of cities outside the “Jabodetabek”, specifically those cities outside the Island of Java.  Perhaps the most important matter now is to determine the prioritization within sustainable development, especially in regard to making development efforts more environmentally friendly.  Development efforts that ignore environmental impact, such as presently occurring in Jakarta, will result in environmental problems that become more complicated, in that overcoming them becomes too expensive.  This assumes, of course, that there is still  time to resolve these problems and the environment has not been damaged to such an extent that that we now are forced to face the negative consequences of our past actions.

Ivan A. Hadar - National Project Coordinator.