The first sight that I saw when I got out of Soekarno-Hatta’ terminal was a bus named “ Indonesia Transportation”. I didn’t want to say that it really represents the face of Indonesian transportation, but I guess it’s part of the face. The bus was naturally air-conditioned with the smell of Jakarta’s dirty river. I couldn’t complain, I was just joking that after being in the US for a while now we are slapped by reality. But no, I didn’t want to complain, I don’t feel like I‘ve done much to my country, so who am I complaining about all of these stuffs? Being away for a year, our main duty overseas was promoting our country, telling good things about our nature and sharing how much I love where I live in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital city. Honestly, I feel really proud to be Indonesian. A lot of the times I think that Indonesian way of living is the best way. We enjoy eating rice, ikan asin and sambal with hands, nothing tastes better than that. We live very close to each other; we can even smell our neighbour’s food and hear their baby’s crying. But then when I come back here and see Indonesia’s face again, I rethink...
Lately, I watched a report telling that Jakarta wants to be a city with the most number of malls in the world. I should’ve been proud, because it means Jakarta will be a modern city and everywhere I go, I can tell people that I have an awesome capital city. You don’t have to go to Singapore to shop because Jakarta provides everything. But I don’t think “Mall” is really the word to define “Modern”. It is so obsolete to conclude that modern should always be about capitalization and commercialism. So far, Jakarta has 130 malls plus another 30 malls in places surrounding (from VIVAnews). It’s really funny, you start from Senayan City, in 5 minutes you will arrive in Plaza Senayan, in 1 minute you will reach Ratu Plaza, in another minute you can go to FX Senayan, then you drive 4 minutes to Pacific Place, then you will need 8 minutes to reach Plaza Semanggi and after that just drive 6 minutes and you will reach Mall Ambassador. In half an hour you’ve seen 7 malls standing very close to each other. I think, building so many malls is not very educational for our society, we are choked by so many different products and we want to have this and that. This habit is imbalanced with the growth of our society. As I’ve seen, there are so many slums behind luxury real estate. There are so many broken and lousy schools beside some mall areas. 67% of land usage in Jakarta is for housing, 46% of it is still without order and part of it is categorized as slum. There is only 5.053 ha (9%) green spaces. There is about 17 million vehicles on the street everyday, personal vehicles (98%) carry 49,7 % of the passenger, while public transportation(2%) should carry 50,3% of the passengers. The cost of transportation is getting higher and the traffic is unsolvable1. Many “modern” cities in the world are racing in building green parks and convenient public transportation. But It is really sad that “mall” is the only attraction that Jakarta has. I would say that Jakarta is very friendly to “penguasa dan pengusaha” because it is such a megapolitan, profitable city. But Jakarta is not being fair enough for those who are poor. It is not hard to find a family of “pengamen” in Jakarta, from generation to generation they are unable to change their fortune. Jakarta is showing its glitter while “flooding” is still a problem every year. I would not blame anyone because it is useless to merely say “this is wrong”. I know we have the human resources who can identify and fix Jakarta’s problem. I guess it is just hard to find those who still stand in poor people sides while the world is offering million for building a commercial area.
In conclusion, Jakarta should be fair in sharing the space for every part of its society. Jakarta is the center of business, government and education. There are many people living in Jakarta, there are many people visiting Jakarta. If Jakarta keeps growing like this, many people will think that Jakarta is hell in the world. It is really hot, really crowded and really dirty. I just want to see a friendly city that offers a smile, not a frown.
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