By Akhyari Hananto
Greater Jakarta is home to upscale self-sufficient cities, you may name BSD City, Bintaro Jaya, Pondok Indah, Citra Garden, Kota Wisata, Kota Bunga, Kota Cibubur, Kota Jababeka, Modernland, Citraland, Pantai Mutiara, Pluit, Kelapa Gading, Lippo Karawaci, Alam Sutera, Sentul City, and many more.
BSD City, the commercial side
Once I discussed with one Indonesian hi-rank developer official, and he said that IF those cities are integrated to each other, and located in one large area, and named under one name, the size of it will be bigger than Singapore and Kuala Lumpur combined. Well, I have no intention to really measure the size of each city, since they are scarcely located.
Summarecon Bekasi
There’s a new city being developed in the east of Jakarta city, called Summarecon Bekasi. Of the 250 hectare of land available, 35 percent will be allocated as commercial area. The developer will build 16 clusters whereby each consists of 6 to 7 hectares with 200 to 300 houses. In addition, there will also be apartments, shopping mall: Sumarecon Mall Bekasi, trade center, office park, shopping houses, modern fresh market, as well as an artificial lake which serves as retention basin.
Harvest City
Other city being developed in the southeast of Jakarta is Harvest City, it presents 1,050 hectare of township, the largest in East Cibubur, Bogor.
BSD City, currently the largest township
Lippo Karawaci
In Addition to those two, there are many more being developed in West Java, and now you can start imagine how big the modern and elite city is when they are combined in one integrated area.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Looking at those pictures, looks like Jakarta is going to be a great, modern, and futuristic city. But the fact is we are far away from futuristic, even from being a proper urban city.
can someone please enlighten me, how is this a good news?
urbanization and proliferation of high-rise towers in Jakarta are not good news. what’s the use of these “new cities” when Jakarta is still plagued with unbearable traffic, poverty, and high-crime rate.
not to mention what would happen to these “new cities” when the government decided to move the capital to another island?
sorry for not being an optimist, i’m simply a realist.
building a clusterized city should minimized human mobility (or, for your problem decreasing traffic)… (emphasize on the word should)… if the place you work is the same place/close with the place you live and the place you go for foods and goods then the use of motorized transportation should be decreased…
the thing is, when things like this are build the people that move in there should be the people that are already there/around the area….
but (of course there’s a but) most people (even the goverment) don’t actually understand.. in the end building high-rises like this only attract those from all over the country making the city even more crowded than it spose to be.. that in the end attract the social problems..
and not to forget most people still follow the old tradition of owning a “house” aka land.. and since the city couldn’t afford any space for that, they go looking outside the city, they spend the half of their life on, which in the end increasing mobility and traffic and stuff
i’m an optimist.. but i also see the real problem (not just the surface)
It’s only in Jakarta and surrounding places,,,
I want more and many more in other places to be spread through archipelago,,,
Jakarta has become too much crowded
What I hate so much:
1. why on earth do many of them use English.
2. they are just Jakarta wannabe, even though not DKI.
All, thank you for your heartwarming responses
I fully agree with Ivan, self-sufficient town like above projects will minimize the number of people travelling. This will also share the burden of big cities like jakarta to somewhere outside.
@fahdi Jakarta will remain a problemed city, maybe will never change. Imagine, if the crowd is not ‘shared’, Jakarta would’ve been totally collapsed several years ago.
And if you happened to visit those cities, they are truly modern, well-managed, well-structured, and healthy.
I lived in BSD city.
I must say that BSD city is FAR MORE MODERN THAN JAKARTA itself.
The city landscape is superb, 3 to 4 lanes road as corridors connecting clusters and zones, sidewalk on every road, busstops, modern hospitals and shopping centers (Giant, Carefour and others), swimming pools, move theatres, high-speed internet and tv cables, Train stations which could takes you to Jakarta in 30-45 mins, Highway to Jakarta which planned to be expanded with new Ulujami-Tanah Abang section which enables BSD city citizen to go straight to Tanah Abang (Jakarta’s central district near national monument) within 30 mins with car.
What really amaze me is when I go just beyond the BSD area, such as town of Serpong. A starkling differences can instantly be seen between “good and bad urban planning” and also “Privately design and government managed” area.
The government’s urban planner definitely need to shape up and had a lot to learn from ‘privately designed’ cities in outer Jakarta.
And yes many big enterprises start to moving out some of their offices to BSD, namely a few BCA, TELKOM, Sigma, Smart (Telco operator, their HQ now in BSD) and rumour said additional shall follow, rumour said it was HP Indonesia and one of the big Banks. It does make sense as BSD to Soekarno-Hatta airport takes only around 30 mins. When that happens those companies employee doesn’t need to go to Jakarta for their daily work routine, as thus reduced Jakarta’s traffic congestion. The ‘offices district’ in BSD itself is on par with Sudirman-Thamrin area.
BSD city population now is around 100.000 and growing.