Jakarta, Indonesia

Jakarta is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Indonesia, an archipelago nation of thousands of islands located in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and straddling the equator. Jakarta is the economic, cultural, and political center of Indonesia. While the city is a bustling metropolis with modern skyscrapers, it also includes many kampongs, or traditional native village houses. Because Jakarta is sinking, a new capital, Nusantara is being built on the island of Borneo.

Landscape

Of the more than thirteen thousand islands that make up Indonesia, the five largest are Sumatra; Java; Borneo, the Indonesian portion of which is called Kalimantan; Sulawesi (formerly Celebes); and New Guinea, the Indonesian portion of which is part of the province of Papua. The city of Jakarta is located on the northwestern coast of the island of Java and occupies a land area of approximately 661.5 square kilometers (255.4 square miles), while greater Jakarta, which includes numerous surrounding cities suburbs and is generally referred to as Jabodetabek (for Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi), covers about 6,400 square kilometers (about 2,471 square miles). Jakarta is bordered by the provinces of West Java to the east and south and Banten to the west.

The city of Jakarta developed along the mouth of the Ciliwung River, which runs into Jakarta Bay. About a dozen other rivers run through the city toward the Java Sea. Northern Jakarta was built on a swampy floodplain just eight meters (about twenty-six feet) above sea level; between the 1970s and 2019, portions of Northern Jakarta sank more than four meters (thirteen feet) below sea level. This low elevation, coupled with the city's extremely wet climate—annual rainfall can exceed 1.7 meters (about 5.5. feet)—leads to frequent flooding during the rainy season (between October and May), when monsoons can be expected. Earthquakes are also a threat to Jakarta.

The northernmost region of Jakarta is home to its oldest buildings, as well as the ethnic Chinese neighborhood of Glodok. To the south is Jakarta's central business district, while the southernmost part of the city features amusement parks, golf courses, and upscale residential areas. There is no part of Jakarta where crowded kampongs cannot be found.

People

Jakarta is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with an estimated population of 11.075 million people in 2022, giving it a population density of about 1,628.2 people per square kilometer (4,216.9 per square mile). The population is a melting pot of national and ethnic backgrounds, including Chinese, Arabs, Indians, Europeans, and ethnic Indonesians, such as Balinese and Sumatrans, who migrated to the city from other islands.

One of the most prominent ethnic groups in Jakarta is the Betawi people. The Betawi ancestry, which dates back to the nineteenth century, is a combination of a number of Southeast Asian and European ethnic groups. The Orang Betawi, as they are known in Jakarta, speak a distinctive dialect of the Malay language that is different from the country's official language, Bahasa Indonesia. Because of Jakarta's long history as a colonial city, the Betawi language was influenced by German, Swedish, French, Danish, and Portuguese as well. English is the most widely spoken foreign language in Jakarta.

While the majority of Jakartans identify as Muslim, there are important differences between the way Islam is practiced by different Indonesian cultural groups such as the Javanese, the Sundanese, and the Malays, and each group maintains a strong and distinct identity. Indonesia itself is not an Islamic state, but one of the founding principles in the country's constitution is a commitment to theism, and to monotheism in particular. Mosques, churches, and Buddhist temples dot Jakarta's landscape.

Economy

Jakarta is the home of Indonesia's busiest trading harbor, Tanjungpriok, and its largest international airport is located about twenty kilometers (about twelve miles) to the west of the city. Numerous railway lines and roadways connect the city to the rest of the country. Traffic congestion is a major problem in Jakarta, partly because the public transportation system—which consists mainly of buses and taxis, plus a riverboat service that travels along the Ciliwung—is very much underused by residents, while car ownership is steadily increasing.

Because Jakarta serves as Indonesia's economic center, it is where the majority of the nation's banking and financial activities occur. The manufacturing industry also has a major presence in Jakarta in the form of soap, glassware, paper, and automotive-parts factories. In addition, the city produces textiles, iron, aluminum, asbestos, and leather. Indonesia's small local film industry is centered in Jakarta as well. Jakarta's telecommunications sector has seen particularly strong growth, largely due to the increasing demand for cell phones among residents.

Although Indonesia is the largest economy in Southeast Asia, its growth has slowed since 2012, in large part as a result of the end of the commodities export boom. Many local residents struggle with unemployment and poverty. Economists estimate that more than two-thirds of the country's citizens work in the informal sector, meaning that they lack benefits and the protections offered by employment legislation. One of the more unusual jobs in Jakarta's informal economy is the position of "car jockey," people who are paid to ride as passengers in the cars of commuters so that they are eligible to use the city's carpool lanes.

Landmarks

The most recognizable landmark in Jakarta is a 137-meter (450-foot) tall obelisk made of marble and gold that stands in the center of Medan Merdeka (Freedom Field). Known as the Monas Monument, or simply the National Monument, it was built by Indonesia's first president, Sukarno. Another important landmark is the Istiqlal Mosque in Central Jakarta.

In the old port of Sunda Kelapa, also known as Pasar Ikan (fish market), a busy fish-auctioning trade operates in the early mornings, and traditional ships with tall sails known as Bugis schooners still dock.

The suburb of Kota, located just south of Sunda Kelapa, was once the center of administration for the colonial powers that ruled Jakarta and is believed to be the oldest settlement in the city. Taman Fatahillah square in Kota still contains a Portuguese cannon and an old fountain that once provided the city with its water supply. Many other buildings in Jakarta also date back to colonial times, including the eighteenth-century presidential palace, known as the Istana Merdeka, or Independence Palace.

Of the city's many museums, the most prominent is the National Museum, where archaeological exhibits detailing the history of Indonesia are displayed. Jakarta is also the home of the Wayang Museum (Shadow Puppet Museum), which showcases the traditional Indonesian art of wayang kulit, and the Museum Seni Rupa dan Keramik (Fine Art and Ceramic Museum), originally built by the Dutch in 1870 to serve as a judiciary building.

On the outskirts of Jakarta, a theme park known as Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature) showcases all of Indonesia's islands and provinces in miniature form. Other tourist attractions include Sea World, an aquarium that showcases the diversity of marine life found in Indonesia's waters, and Thousand Islands, a string of islands, atolls, and islets off the coast of Java that are home to numerous resorts.

History

The modern-day site of Jakarta has been inhabited by native fishermen from the fifth century CE, and trade ships from China and Vietnam began docking at the mouth of the Ciliwung at about the same time. In the twelfth century, a group of Hindu Sundanese from West Java known as the Pajajarans founded Sunda Kelapa, which five hundred years later had become a busy, successful trading port visited by merchants from various Southeast Asian countries. At about this time, Portuguese forces signed a treaty with the Pajajarans giving them the right to build a warehouse and a fort there. The Portuguese were later ousted by an invading sultan from a neighboring Islamic kingdom. It was this sultan who christened the city Jayakarta, Sundanese for "glorious fortress."

During the early seventeenth century, the city was taken over by the Dutch, who established their own capital there. They maintained control over the city and repelled several invasions, including attacks by British forces, the sultanate of Banten, and a Javanese empire known as Mataram. A particularly devastating battle in 1619 destroyed most of the city.

In the nineteenth century, the city expanded southward to avoid the north's swampy soil. During this period, Jakarta experienced an ethnic Chinese rebellion, which was put down by the Dutch, and then witnessed the decline of the Dutch colonial powers. The city was temporarily controlled by the British during the Napoleonic Wars of 1803–15.

During the early twentieth century, a wave of nationalism swept across the whole of Indonesia. By the time the Japanese occupation of Jakarta during World War II had ended, Dutch rule of the country was virtually over. On August 17, 1945, Indonesia declared its independence. This declaration was officially recognized by the international community in 1949.

Since 1949, growth in Jakarta's infrastructure, industry, and commercial sector has thrust the capital into the modern era. Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, oversaw much of the construction and development in Jakarta. During the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, however, both the country and the city suffered economic losses that resulted in violent protests and riots in Jakarta against the corrupt government of Sukarno's successor, Suharto. In 1998, Suharto resigned. In 2004, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became the country's first directly elected president and the sixth president overall. He was succeeded by Joko Widodo in 2014; Widodo was reelected in 2019.

In 2019, the Indonesian government announced that it would relocate Indonesia's capital to another location, in large part because Jakarta was sinking by as much as ten inches a year and the sea level around it was rising. The drilled wells of corporations and more affluent households had significantly drained the groundwater aquifer beneath the megacity, leaving Northern Jakarta particularly prone to seawater and stormwater flooding and to more subsidence. Construction likely also contributed to increased land compression. The government planned to protect Jakarta by building a giant seawall, a dike, and artificial islands—a plan opposed by fishers and environmentalists alike.

Throughout the early 2020s, the Indonesian government continued to pursue this plan; in addition to Jakarta's ongoing sinking issues, the city also struggled with pollution and was vulnerable to earthquakes. At that time, some estimates predicted that one-third of Jakarta could be underwater by 2050; in line with this estimate, the Indonesian government hoped to complete construction on the new capital, known as Nusantara and located in the East Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo, by 2045. Despite some opposition from environment activists and Indigenous communities in East Kalimantan, construction on the new capital was well underway by May 2023. The first phase of construction was slated to be complete by the end of 2024 before Widodo's presidential term ends.

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