Jakarta, Indonesia

COORDINATOR

The Mega-Cities Coordinator in Jakarta is an architect, urban planner, and environmentalist by background. Of his forty- one years of civil service for the Jakarta City Government, fourteen were spent in the City Planning Office, four were in the Public Works Department, fourteen were in the Kampung Improvement Program Unit, and nine were in City Government Enterprises. Among the awards he has received over his career are the 1980 Aga Khan Awards for Architecture and the City Government "Karya Sastra" Award III, presented by the President of Republic of Indonesia for thirty years of public service.

In 1991 the Governor of Jakarta instructed him to become the Mega-Cities Coordinator and attend the Mega-Cities Coordinators Meeting at New Delhi, India. Since the Seventh Annual Meeting was held in Jakarta in 1993, the Jakarta fieldsite has been very involved in Mega-Cities' activities. Its main objective has been to assist the private and public sectors in improving urban management toward sustainable development by strengthening and empowering community participation.

HOST INSTITUTION

The Host Institution has been contracted by the Local Government of Jakarta for a study called the Kampung Improvement Program (KIP). This study, part of the policy of the Seventh Five-Year Development Plan, emphasizes community-based development.

Through the Center for Information and Development Studies, the coordinators have also been working together with the Indonesian Association of Intercities to set up a City Net.

STEERING COMMITTEE

• Komaruddin, Deputy Chairman for System Analysis of the Center for Research and Application of Technology
• Tubagus M. Rais, Deputy Governor for Development Affairs of the Jakarta Metropolitan City

JAKARTA AT-A-GLANCE

In 1930 Jakarta was a city of 530,000 people surrounded by rural villages (Kampungs). After the 1942 Japanese occupation, Jakarta became the capital city of the new Indonesian nation.

Population
The average annual population rate declined from 4.5% in 1961-1971 to 4.0% in 1971-1980 to 2.4% in the 1990s. This trend is misleading, however, as Jakarta's functional population grew more than 300,000 a year in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1995, the Jakarta Metropolitan Area had a population of 11.5 million with a growth rate of 2.1%.

Roughly 60% of the population live in informal settlements called kampungs.

Economy
Trade in Jakarta is very important and comprised 24% of GDP in 1983, while agriculture's share of GDP decreased from 6.5 to 1.5% during the period between 1969 and 1983. Manufacturing has developed slowly, increasing from 9.8 to 17% of GDP during that time period.

Jakarta's contribution to the 1996 National GDP was 7%, in which was included 17% of domestic industrial production and 61% of financial activities.

Per capita income in Jakarta is US$730.00.

Health and Environment
The fertility rate in Jakarta has remained moderately high, even though Indonesia's family planning program, rising levels of education, and a later average age at marriage have all contributed to lowering the rate. It currently stands at 4.1 births per woman.

The infant mortality rate (under 5 years of age) is 44.9 per 1000 live births. Average life expectancy is 58 years.

Infrastructure and Social Services
Jakarta has large areas of uncontrolled development along major canals, railways, and roads. The government has adopted an innovative Guided Land Development, providing 60% of affordable serviced urban land.

Transportation— Jakarta's infrastructure includes many urban railways and canals. Private transport accounts for 85% of total vehicles. There are roughly 2000 vehicles in Jakarta that run on compressed gas. Jakarta also has a public transportation system, utilized by 60% of the population.

Waste Disposal —Open dumping constitutes the most common form of waste disposal. Scavengers called City Cleansing Dinas handle 35% of the total daily amount of solid waste.

Pollution —Air pollution is caused mainly by vehicle emissions and burning waste, which contribute 44% and 41% of the total, respectively.

Water —The main source of drinking water is in the hilly regions outside DKI. Approximately 80% of residents use groundwater. Only 20% of the population have access to safe water and sanitation. Low water quality is responsible for 20% of the deaths from diarrhea-related diseases.

Kampung Improvement Program
During a time in which much of the world was looking for solutions to the housing problems caused by urbanization, Jakarta started in 1969 to implement the Kampung Improvement Program. With the aim of improving the slums, or kampungs, in which 60% of the city's population live, the Program provided infrastructure in the form of roads, footpaths, drainage, public toilets, elementary school buildings, health clinics, garbage boxes and carts, and public water taps. The basis for adopting this policy was the City Government's lack of funds to relocate the almost 3 million people who lived in the kampungs. Since the houses, people, and social structure were already there, the government had only to provide for the basic needs of the people. From the beginning of the Program, it was considered a human investment program and not merely an attempt to improve the physical condition of the kampungs. The program was successful despite a budget of only US$118 per capita.

This Program has now been adopted as national policy, and more than 500 cities throughout the country have implemented similar programs. Other countries have transferred and modified the program according to their specific local conditions.

The Program stimulates a self-help attitude in the residents, the majority of whom are migrants, and improves the people's physical environment and quality of life. The key to the Program's success was its ability to impact many number of people despite limited funds. The program received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1980, and was recognized by the June 1996 Habitat II Conference in Istanbul as one of the best tools for overcoming urban housing problems, through its use of appropriate technology and an inexpensive budget, and for its sustainability and replicability. Over five and a half million people in Jakarta have been the beneficiaries of the program, making it perhaps the largest urban program in the world.

The World Bank began to assist the Jakarta Government in 1974 with loans to speed up the completion of the Program, but migrants continued to pour into the city. The formal sector was simply unable to supply enough housing to meet the demand, and so migrants packed up the kampungs in the city and built new ones in the suburbs. Although formal housing development is expanding, the target market is not for the urban poor. Therefore, a new KIP policy has been in effect since 1989, employing three methods:

1. Social development—strengthening and empowering community participation
2. Economic development—enhancing local small-scale industries and businesses
3. Physical development—upgrading the quality of the physical environment

The new approach (KIP III) has made progress in improving the quality of the physical and non-physical environment as well as the productivity of the people, and in eradicating poverty, and empowering community participation.

Local NGOs have been set up to coordinate all development activities in their area, successfully functioning as a bridge between the government program and people's aspirations. The goal of KIP III is to set up active, innovative, participative, self-sustaining communities that will improve the quality of urban life.

Since its introduction in 1969, KIP has been transferred to more than 500 cities in Indonesia as well as internationally. Through the Mega-Cities Network, information about KIP is spreading to other Mega-Cities Coordinators, ensuring that this transfer of ideas will continue.

Although the Jakarta Government has been successfully implementing the Kampung Improvement Program since 1969, urban renewal is replacing it as the government policy of choice. The City Government has to build 4.5 houses per hour in order to fulfill the additional housing need, but the formal housing supply provides for less than 25% of the demand. In other words, more than 50% of houses are provided or built by the people themselves.

Old kampungs in the city center are densifying, and new kampungs in the outskirts are growing rapidly. Attention is given mainly to the physical environment, while the city's population is often neglected. As a result, the quality of the urban environment is declining, and the mortality rate of children under five years of age is increasing in poor housing environments.

Jakarta is currently the third most polluted city in the world. Air pollution, 70% of which is caused by motor vehicles, has crossed the safety threshold. The thirteen rivers that flow across the city are also very polluted due to sedimentation and waste from industry and households.

Respiratory diseases are still on the rise. With about 50% of the houses lacking natural ventilation and lighting, internal housing climates are often humid and unhealthy. Most of the kampung people are still using kerosene stoves for cooking and burning their garbage, causing more air pollution.

Since housing density is so high, it is impossible to control the shallow wells from the septic tanks or their drains. Ground water contamination is inevitable, contributing to increases in morbidity. The water supply system does not reach the majority of the kampungs, and the City Administration's sanitation system leaves 25% of Jakarta's garbage uncollected.

Due to the current monetary crisis, industries are contracting, businesses are closing down, and the rate of unemployment is increasing. Long dry seasons cause agricultural lands to remain unplanted, pushing rural people to migrate to the cities. Compounding the problem is the fact that squatted land is often cleared without considering where the people will live; the result is that poverty is simply moved from one location to an even worse one.

Land clearances through removing kampungs along the 13 riverbanks and building apartment complexes will never solve the problem. Studies have shown that more than 60% of the target group who are expected to live in the subsidized apartments are moving out. Too many subsidies to one sector raise opportunity costs; other sectors more in need of subsidization will be neglected while immigrants keep coming into the city. Housing is not the only problem in Jakarta or in the country, and so limited public funds should be utilized efficiently and effectively, and private sector and individual participation should be encouraged.

With so many qualitative and quantitative problems, Jakarta needs better urban management that is based on an urban ecology approach.