Jakarta: The Absence of Nationalism

in Transnational City

In my visit to Jakarta in the last summer, I was experiencing the urban, metropolitan city very
distinct from other major cities in the world. Jakarta was rather segregated into different areas, correlat-
ing with the different social order from the impoverished caste to the highly opulent and more authorita-
tive group of people. However, unlike the balanced ratio of slums versus upscale area in New York, To-
kyo, or Paris, Jakarta is very imbalanced; with the façade of highly-rised buildings, commercial, business
and financial district, contrast with the bigger area of slums (kampung in Indonesian, literally means
rural village, however in this matter located in the
middle of urban area, and regarded as low-income
housings and has a much lower standard of living)
surrounding it. The reason why Jakarta reflects a
failure of a structured urban area is based on the
fact that it’s listed number 46th in list of world’s
cities by GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and num-
ber 16th of the 20 largest megacities in 2005 and
their projected GDP in 2030 (Fig. 1). Indonesia
itself is also listed number 16th in list of countries
by GDP by IMF, World Bank, and World Factbook,
just ahead of Australia and ranking it the highest
in GDP as a South East Asian country. Neverthe-
less, it is also a fact that GDP doesn’t take into ac-
count the wealth distribution of a city or country,
Fig. 1 : Jakarta listed in top 20 largest megacities according to GDP.
which could refer to the imbalanced income from
the impoverished (lower class) and upper-middle
class, thus GDP is limited in determining the economic health of a country. The simple statistic data of
Indonesia’s economy is also disregarding major issues such as misallocation of investments, over-exploi-
tation of natural resources, and ultimately the standard of living in much bigger areas. Jakarta’s zoning
and urban planning is reflecting a social inequality and present urban issues (such as transportation,
traffic jams, air pollution, economic routes and distribution) and a significant issue of how racial status
(Chinese descendants dwelling in Indonesia as opposed to native Indonesians) still serves as a measure-
ment of social class; a bourgeois point of view in a globalizing world.


In his writing of Behind the Postcolonial, Abidin Kusno argued about how “urban design contrib-
utes to providing a postcolonial “national” city that cuts across class, ethnic and racial boundaries.”(p.145)
In analyzing Jakarta’s urban activities and built environment, there’s antibiosis in the living condition
of lower class people, social and racial mentality, economic distribution, and decisions made in urban
planning and construction. By addressing the existing problems in Jakarta, I’d like to bridge the causes
and effects into a much more essential origin, delineating Indonesian’s cultural history, historical events,
national mentality and attitude either as a counter response or internally affected by colonialism. For In-
stance, the persisting problem of traffic jams in Jakarta, a mostly shared experience by the vehicle users,
is analogous to the amount of privately owned cars, as:

“no matter how often the authorities launch their orderly-traffic campaigns, no matter how many new rules
and regulations are introduced and no matter how many new roads are built or enlarged, Jakarta’s traf-
fic snarls continue to grow worse almost by the day” (Jakarta Post, January 8, 1995: 1 quoted in Kusno
p.147). (Fig.2)

The substantial amount of upper-middle class community who

prefer to have his/her own vehicle is justifiably caused by the feel
of insecurity and distress in taking a public transport; Jakarta’s
Bus Rapid Transit System is dominated by lower class workers
commuting from rural to the central area of the city. When the
government introduced ‘three-in-one’ zones, where all vehicles
passing through the area are prohibited from entering unless
they carry at least two other passengers besides the driver, inter-
estingly, it started the appearance of ‘street urchins’ or ‘hitchhik-
ers’ who offer service as an additional passengers, and in return
would receive ‘tip’ or payment. Whether or not this activity seems
to be motivated from the fear of getting fines from law enforce-
ment, there’s an additional interaction between lower class and
upper class society, where they share in one ride. However, the
broader aspect I want to discuss here is the tendency of social
separation between upper and lower class as a response to either
the unorganized and ineffective transportation system and high-
Figure 2: Everyday scene of Jakarta Traffic Jams
ways or the predisposition of insecurity of an upper class worker
who contemplates on social or even racial status.
 In traveling around Jakarta,
one could argue that there’s a constant
sense of foreign-ness not affiliated with
what represents Indonesia. As a capital
city, Jakarta should have represented
the international ‘gate’ and the front
frontier of Indonesia with its highly dis-
tinctive culture and traditional aesthet-
ics. However, major shopping districts,
real estates, and luxurious residential
areas are not only displayed as a ‘roy-
alty throne’ over impoverished area,
but also an unrefined, superficial coat-
ing of ‘Greco-Roman Revival’, borrowed
from the preconception of the rather
orthodox Western’s display of surplus,
lavish, and monumental authority. One
of the biggest and exclusive malls in
Jakarta, Grand Indonesia, is designed Figure 3: Various scenes of reproduction in Grand Indonesia and other Jakarta Malls.
with its interior having different ‘World
themes’, such as ‘New York theme’,
‘Chinatown theme’, or visually interesting design of a restaurant in the shape of a yacht, where it envi-
sions a family oriented gathering place and recreational area (Fig. 3). However the issue of accessibility
into these magnificent and splendor building is specifying the wealth gap between the higher class group
of people and the lower class group; it literally stand out among the deficiently built kampung areas, which
populace comprises a bigger percentage of the city dwellers. Another matter is that the very lacking ele-
ments of local culture would make it a good example of how globalization in Jakarta had made it irrational
for private investors, in decision-making of what to build and what not to, by almost completely abandoning
any vernacular aspect in it. No matter it is a native or a foreigner, one couldn’t possibly assume that Grand
Indonesia belong to Indonesia; it is an utterly in a different category of mediocre replicas that enhances the
plastic and superficial quality of Jakarta’s globalized lifestyle. By this example that incorporated almost the
entire urban fabric of Jakarta, we would start to ask questions of origins; how and when the social disparity
and the loss of national identity had manifested in Jakarta’s urban built form.


Known as a member of one of the “westernized” elites, the former vice president, Mohammad
Hatta, was addressing the problem of unity and integrity:

“…The reason for all this is that most of our cities did not arise from our own society but rather as append-
ages of a foreign economy. These cities are not centers of the creative activity of our own people but primar-
ily distribution centers for foreign goods… That is why our cities are not capable of filtering the foreign
cultures that come here…We must be cautious and selective in the face of foreign cultures…For more than
three hundred years we were dominated by the Dutch, and this did not destroy our culture” (quoted in
Kusno p.149).

Here there is a struggle to protect Indonesia’s traditional culture and heritage from Westernization of the
Dutch colonialism, and the International economic dependency after the declaration of Indonesia’s inde-
pendence. Despite the seemingly positive approach, by clearly differentiating and finalizing the borderline
between Modernization and Cultural Heritage, Mohammad Hatta’s mentality is in a way rejecting to
accept modernity as a necessary development towards a more integrated Modern Indonesia. In this sense,
Indonesian cities are rather trapped in an inevitable current of the global world for the sake of the coun-
try’s economic growth. Moreover, the natives’ attitude towards new urbanized areas is rather passive and
obligated, and migrations to urban cities were derived mostly from “poverty and overpopulation of rural
Java” (Kusno p.151). This notion of foreign culture towards the urban cities are elaborated further by
Kusno:
“This transposition of space from rural to city enables both a forgetting of rural origins as well as
a remembrance of them. The city here is far from obliterating the rural, but it enables the imagining or
re-emphasizing of the common people that are presumably living in rural areas. The city represented as
“foreign” thus enables the production of a new individuality and, by definition, an imagining of the old col-
lective rural and also vernacular-indigenous identity” (p.151).

In this concern, the concept of experience between rural and urban is fully metaphysical; there’s not much
spatial and concrete relation and comparison. Even though the well-known ex-Governor of Jakarta, Ali
Sadikin, proposed that “the images of social relations in the milieu of the urban kampung called up the
‘traditional’, smoothly working, relatively harmonious, self-enclosed ‘village of rural origin’ that cherished
communalism”(Kusno p.152), there’s little that we can correlate between the cramped, unhygienic, and
polluted kampung to the more nature-surrounded rural villages. The insufficient attempt to reconfigure
the city’s form to the traditional spatial organization and societal value (as a traditional culture of agricul-
tural living), by simply accepting it as it is, fails to accommodate a healthy living space for the indigenous
people migrating from rural areas. With little that could be brought about in the urbanized area, Indo-
nesian cities cannot generate a new sense of nationalism despite the attempts to incorporate literally the
building styles (shape of roof, veranda, etc.) and village customs and activities; Indonesian cities remain
foreign and remote to the majority of native Indonesians.
 The riots of May 1998, as Kusno argued, had a “symbolic attacks on the Indonesian Chinese…The
attacks were nonetheless carried out through an abstraction of the Chinese as ‘outsiders’ and through an
association of them with ‘wealth’” (p.155) (Fig. 4). The riots also demarcated that:

“the rioters showed that they are not like the Indonesian Chinese…the riots against the Chinese became a
message sent by the rioters, less to the Chinese than to themselves, that ‘we’ are not like ‘them’…, identities
were formed and also transformed” (Kusno p.164).

On the other hand, to the Chinese, who constituted about 3 percent of the country’s 200 million popula-
tion yet perceived as dominating the country’s economy, detached themselves even further, establish-
ing themselves, out of fear, anger, and memory of past events, as ‘foreigners’, whose works and financial
investments are mainly dedicated to other exclusive upper-middle class Jakartans.

Figure 4: The May 1998 Riot, native Indonesians were attacking, robbing and looting stores,

houses, and cars owned by Chinese Indonesians

About 60,000 hectares of land for housing, located on the outskirts of Jakarta, is said to be controlled by
10 large developers, mainly of ethnic Chinese background. These developers tend to sell lands merely to
speculators or to build luxurious houses in the eyes of capitalist modernity. The inspiration of these devel-
opers is neither rural nor nationalistic. Due to the collapse of Indonesian Communist Party in 1967, The
New Order of Indonesia banned any potential representations of Chinese cultural events, as they were
highly perceived as connected politically to the Communist Party. In result, The Chinese private business
developers inevitably gained inspiration from Euro-American living style.
A quote from an advertisement of the largest real estate developer of Indonesia, Ciputra Group, who is
also a Chinese descent:

“All the beauty and harmony in this world are the sources of inspiration to create and innovate special
designs that will enable people to enjoy a more colorful and joyous life…The belief is that as long as the
Group produces creative and quality products, it will prove its dedication and contribution to the society”
(quoted in Kusno p.158).

With that proposal on design aspiration, problematic consequences started to occur such as; the widen-
ing income gap between lower class and upper-middle class and the symbolic domination over Indonesian
society that is aspired by this very foreign influence, barely related to any of Indonesia’s cultural history.
Goenawan Mohamad indicated the psychological effects of how the capital city remains an uncomfortable
place to live in:

“Jakarta does not seem to offer

any meaningful sense of con-
nection; there is nothing that
must be retained and must not
be lost… The city is alienat-
ing and it cannot stand alone,
it is neither controlled by the
‘Dutch-style fortress’ nor by
the spirit of the ancient Java-
nese ‘Mataram Kingdom’, but
by something else, something
stronger – the economic and
political forces around it, that
made us all foreigners here”
(quoted in Kusno p.162).


Kusno later also remarked an essential statement that “the foreign-ness of Jakarta comes as a
result of not following the proper process of nation-building. Here the city embodies a series of identities
constructed initially for the Indonesian Chinese: ‘Money, exclusivity, and transnationality’”(p.163) (Fig. 5).
Since Suharto stabilized his power in 1967, the Indonesia Chinese have been excluded from politics and
have been made to represent themselves in the sector of economic success and hardship. The Indonesian
Chinese is the economic powerhouse for Indonesia’s position in the international scope, however their con-
tribution and execution is purely foreign or ‘transnational’. As the byproduct of Indonesia as a colonized
country (establishing the relationship between Chinese and anything ‘foreign’), and the decisions made
in Suharto’s New Order, Jakarta, as a representation of Indonesia’s multi-faceted disputes, is caught in
a pattern of poor wealth distribution, transnationalistic culture, international economic dependency, and
unthoughtful building and rebuilding.

In protecting Asia’s traditional heritage in a globalizing world, William S. Logan observed, “what
may also be new is the emergence of a counter-tendency to recognize, and often reinvent, traditional cul-
tural heritage and urban forms in many Asian societies. In other words, globalization and localization
are occurring side by side” (p.xii). He stated that we could actually “see this as resulting from a growing
awareness that globalization does not represent ‘an overall process of uniformization’ but that it is, rath-
er, a process that reinforces cultural difference”(Logan p.xvii). By conjoining global and local aspects and
altering the economic concentration to promoting local cultures to a more standardized global taste (for
instance, UNESCO lays down international standards for professional practices in the cultural heritage
field), Indonesia would be able to break through the pattern of the deteriotating disputes and simultane-
ously reinventing a modern cultural heritage within the International views. Although I realize that in
some places the standards of living is so low that economic development strategy would seem more im-
portant, the government along with the private investors should consider restorations and reinventions of
Indonesia’s tradition, deconstructing it in such a way that not only the indigenous but all of the layers of
foreign, largely European, colonial influences are revealed. Finally, there’s so much to be carried out with
Logan’s proposal about ‘Paradoxical articulations’:

“Rather than seeing cultural heritage protec- Figure 6: Indonesia’s historical and cultural asset that could

tion as an obstacle to development, it is now benefit economically and culturally if promoted further.

recognized that the two can go hand in hand,

and that policies dealing with the two aspects
together can bring about more effective pro-
grams to raise standards of living in develop-
ing countries and elsewhere, and lead cities
towards a more sustainable future.” (p.xxi)
(Fig. 6)
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