Jakarta: A city of cities (original) (raw)

Jakarta, Indonesia's primate city and the world's second largest urban agglomeration, is undergoing a deep transformation. A fresh city profile of Jakarta is long overdue, given that there have been major events and developments since the turn of the millennium (the Asian Financial crisis and decentralisation in Indonesia, among the most important), as well as the fact that the city is a living entity with its own processes to be examined. The inhabitants of the city have also taken centre stage now in these urban processes, including the recent pandemic COVID-19 response. Our paper profiles Jakarta heuristically in two cuts: presenting the city from conventional and academic perspectives of megacities like it, which includes contending with its negative perceptions, and more originally, observing the city from below by paying attention to the viewpoints of citizens and practitioners of the city. In doing so, we draw from history, geography, anthropology, sociology and political science as well as from our experience as researchers who are based in the region and have witnessed the transformation of this megacity from within, with the idea that the portrayal of the city is a project permanently under construction. 1. Everyday Jakarta Present-day Jakarta and its metro area seem a massive and chaotic jumble of concrete, asphalt, vehicles, and people. Each day the streets carry more than 20 million vehicles; every year, approximately 11% more motorcycles, cars, buses, and trucks take to the streets (BPS Provinsi DKI Jakarta, 2018). 1 On average, motorists spend more than half their daylight hours stuck in traffic, and when they can move, their speed is only about 5 km/h during rush period (Tempo.co, 2015). 2 The city (comprising Jakarta and its metro area) spans 4384 km 2 and has a population density of around 13,000 people per km 2 (Idem). Such a high population density makes land one of the most highly desired commodity in the city, a situation not unlike megacities elsewhere. The continual pressures a rising population put on scarce land result in acute mobility problems and permanent infrastructural deficiencies. Concomitantly, the competition for land in Jakarta gives rise to an endless cycle of conflicts, invasions, evictions, and eternal legal disputes between original owners, developers, and other powerful agents (Herlambang, Leitner, Liong Ju, Sheppard, & Anguelov, 2018). Every day, city and countryside seem to merge in this spatial conglomerate, in a sort of babel of skin and eye colors, languages, conversations, memories, shouts, watchful eyes, rumors and gossip. Intermingled with sirens, pounding and drilling, singing birds, helicopters' whumping roar, the adhan, 3 vehicle horns, squealing cranes, croaking frogs, vendors' harangues, quacking ducks, the roar of engines and the whistling of the wind all become part of the same ubiquitous miasma of vomit, urine, sweat, kretek, 4 stagnant water, burning trash, smoked meat, perfume, smog, gorengan, 5 kerosene, open sewage,