Indonesia Names New Capital that Will Replace Jakarta (bbc.com) 50
Indonesia has announced that its new capital will be called Nusantara, meaning "archipelago" in Javanese. From a report: The country's parliament approved a bill to relocate the capital from Jakarta, which is rapidly sinking. The idea of building a new capital 1,300km (800 miles) away on the island of Borneo was first proposed in 2019. But critics have said the new name could be confusing and that the move itself fails to take environmental factors into consideration. Jakarta has become crowded, polluted and is sinking at an alarming rate due to the over-extraction of groundwater. Home to more than 10 million people, it sits on swampy land on the large island of Java.
Air pollution and traffic jams in the city are notorious. Government ministers have to be escorted by police convoys to get to meetings on time. In building a new capital in East Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on the island of Borneo, the government hopes it can take some of the pressure off Jakarta. Known for its jungles and orangutan population, mineral-rich East Kalimantan is home to only 3.7 million people, according to the most recent census. Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Planning Minister Suharso Monoarfa said "the new capital has a central function and is a symbol of the identity of the nation, as well as a new centre of economic gravity." But critics have argued that the construction of the new city will lead to the expansion of palm-oil plantations and logging in an area rich in diverse wildlife and lush rainforests.
Air pollution and traffic jams in the city are notorious. Government ministers have to be escorted by police convoys to get to meetings on time. In building a new capital in East Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on the island of Borneo, the government hopes it can take some of the pressure off Jakarta. Known for its jungles and orangutan population, mineral-rich East Kalimantan is home to only 3.7 million people, according to the most recent census. Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Planning Minister Suharso Monoarfa said "the new capital has a central function and is a symbol of the identity of the nation, as well as a new centre of economic gravity." But critics have argued that the construction of the new city will lead to the expansion of palm-oil plantations and logging in an area rich in diverse wildlife and lush rainforests.
Hope it works better than the last attempt (Score:3)
I think the most recent attempt to relocate a capital city was Naypyidaw in Myanmar. It now stands as a ghost town with an official population in the hundreds of thousands, but barely a sole to ever be seen.
https://theculturetrip.com/asi... [theculturetrip.com]
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Re:Hope it works better than the last attempt (Score:5, Funny)
..but barely a sole to ever be seen..
Why should there be soles? Naypyidaw is over 100km from the sea!
Re:Hope it works better than the last attempt (Score:5, Funny)
Don't be ridiculous, he called it a Ghost town obviously it lacks shoes... as ghosts don't have feet.
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Why shouldn't there? Nearly every soul on the planet has at least two soles. There are even people who masturbate to them.
Napidaw is quite different (Score:2)
It was created to specifically keep the people away from the military government elite. And it works quite well for that.
But Jakarta is sinking. Literally. It desperately needs to be broken up, and have people move elsewhere. Where there is government, there are government contractors etc.
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but barely a sole to ever be seen.
That sounds fishy.
Re:Hope it works better than the last attempt (Score:4, Insightful)
There is also Cuidad de la Paz, intended to replace Malabo as the capital of Equatorial Guinea. Current capital is on an island not close to their mainland, but very close to the shore of a rival nation (Cameroon). So they have a point in moving, but the result is the same, it's a ghost city.
Regarding Naypyidaw, it was designed to be impractical to live and move around as to prevent popular revolts to take shape. An impractical city means nobody wants to live there.
Re:Hope it works better than the last attempt (Score:5, Informative)
It reminds me of when Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium, which was at the time a relatively small former Greek colony on the Bosporus. He did this in part because he wanted a capital more centralized than Rome, and in part because by the 3rd century Rome itself had become a bit run down, and he aimed to complete Diocletian's reforms. It wasn't exactly the beginning of Rome's decay (which had started earlier) but Rome was no longer seen as suitable for a large empire. Controlling the Bosporus also gave Constantine more direct suzerainty over the Eastern provinces and more security from the unreliable German tribes.
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Which is why you relocate your capital in Rome Total War to a more central location. Helps to keep the revolts down in some cases.
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I must say, you don't look that old. Had some work done?
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“Moving capitals” seems to simply mean “moving the seat of government”. “Capital” is a fairly useless term with no real implication behind it.
I live in a country with a different capital to it's seat of government; it did not officially have a capital until the early nineties but by convention everyone simply considered the largest city, which is not the seat of government, the capital and the constitution finally officially recognized what was long known. — Had it
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"Capital" comes from the Latin "caput" meaning "head", with the implication that it's the most important city. The fact that the Netherlands is an exception to the usual inferences which can be drawn from that doesn't make the term useless.
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And how would one move the most important city is my point?
Every historical moving of capitals that I know of was moving the seat of the government. Indeed, Istanbul is still generally regarded as the most important city despite the capital having been moved to Ankara, and the same can be said about São Paulo and Brasilia. — Moving capitals has perhaps historically led to importance being shifted over time, but this always took time.
One cannot declare by edict which city is the most “impor
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In fact, I would argue that it is a very common situation in a country for the most important city to not be the seat of government or capital. Most countries name whatever city is the seat of government as the capital, and choose the location strategically, this was the only reason the capital was moved to Ankara, as Istanbul was both hard to defend, and not centrally in the country.
What makes the Netherlands unique is that it combines two things which are not unique of itself: having the seat of governmen
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I think the most recent attempt to relocate a capital city was Naypyidaw in Myanmar. It now stands as a ghost town with an official population in the hundreds of thousands, but barely a sole to ever be seen.
https://theculturetrip.com/asi... [theculturetrip.com]
I think that building a new capital is doable, Brazil managed to do it [wikipedia.org]. You just make a couple government buildings, a couple hotels, start holding proceedings there, and then people will start moving there to do business involving the government.
The key is to let it grow organically. I think there's an great opportunity to do some top-down planning to guide new growth, but you can't build a stadium and a bunch of malls before anyone lives there.
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You just make a couple government buildings, a couple hotels, start holding proceedings there, and then people will start moving there to do business involving the government.
That lack of forethought is precisely why Naypyidaw failed. The build it and they will come philosophy doesn't work. You need to directly incentivise. Mind you Jakarta sinking is a somewhat good incentive.
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You just make a couple government buildings, a couple hotels, start holding proceedings there, and then people will start moving there to do business involving the government.
That lack of forethought is precisely why Naypyidaw failed. The build it and they will come philosophy doesn't work. You need to directly incentivise. Mind you Jakarta sinking is a somewhat good incentive.
I think you're misunderstanding my point.
Naypyidaw had as much "forethought" as they could muster, they built an entire city. And as for incentives, I'm not sure what the military dictatorship did, but if anyone understands "incentives" it's a military dictatorship.
The key is what does every city need? A primary industry, be it manufacturing, trade, tourism, or in this case, government. The very fact that government officials and officials will now be working there means that all the people who have dealing
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Naypyidaw had as much "forethought" as they could muster
The key is what does every city need? A primary industry, be it manufacturing, trade, tourism, or in this case, government
Though contradict yourself. They had an idea. Not a forethought on how to build a city. And no government is not an economic industry. Placing a government somewhere does not mean a city will automatically be a social or economic success. It is very different from the actual primary industries you listed which are important. People don't follow governments. In fact they largely don't interact with them at all, and when they do it's an essential commute, nothing more.
Simply moving the government over and not
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.. but barely a sole to ever be seen.
They always keep their feet on the ground?
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Yes. It's quite a clever pun, because in Indonesia it's rude to show the soles of your feet to someone else.
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Yes. It's quite a clever pun, because in Indonesia it's rude to show the soles of your feet to someone else.
Yes pun. That is *exactly* what I was going for. A pun. No spelling error, just me being suuuuper clever :-)
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It's unfortunate that Haiti isn't the "last attempt" at moving capitals (after their earthquake). They're still in major danger from earthquakes and still have big problems with their capital. It seems like Bill Gates could have have rounded up a few other wealthy do-gooders and said, ok you're a special hard luck case, and offered to build some strong new government buildings for a new capital, just say where you want the new capital city.
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One cherry picked anecdotal example doesn't mean anything -- even assuming the situations and circumstances are the same (which they aren't.) There are other occasions where moving the capital did succeed as intended.
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No where did I say it would fail. And it's not cherry picked, it's literally the most recent attempt to build a new capital and relocate in south east Asia. I do wish them well.
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But, moving the capital just because it's overcrowded, polluted and sinking into a swamp? Who's next Mexico? The Veneto region? The US (I keep hearing there's a swamp in the capital)? That castle from Monty Python? What if they start a trend!?
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Of course there are, I didn't say it would fail, just that it better be more successful than the most recent south east Asian attempt to move a capital.
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I think the most recent attempt to relocate a capital city was Naypyidaw in Myanmar. It now stands as a ghost town with an official population in the hundreds of thousands, but barely a sole to ever be seen.
https://theculturetrip.com/asi... [theculturetrip.com]
The last relocation to a purpose built capital city was actually Ngerulmud in Palau in 2006, Myanmar was in 2005. Lots of planned capital cities have worked. In 2003 the Malaysian govt relocated to Putrajaya.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
It made sense to move the govt and related services out of Kuala Lumpur which was highly congested to begin with. Malaysia, like Indonesia is mostly a functioning democracy, sure there will be a lot of backhand deals and government favouritism... this is SE Asia
Middle of nowhere (Score:2)
East Kalimantan is home to only 3.7 million people
So they basically want to build the capital in the middle of nowhere. Most capitals are at a river or near other important infrastructure. That might not be a coincidence.
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It's basically at the end of a river but significantly inland and presumably on bedrock.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/... [openstreetmap.org]
news for nerds? (Score:2)
not sure why this is on slashdot but no worries, I still have an opinion on it ;-)
looking thru my 'if I were a journalist' glasses... a simple map would have conveyed so much but the only one I could find was on a related article thru a link
some of the other visuals were included in the recent article but not the map; strange choice if one is trying to inform the reader
hey msmash, is this the best you can do?
If not for Oracle's army of lawyers... (Score:5, Funny)
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Or OracleE!
Terribly news... (Score:2)
Borneo is extremely valuable from the point of its nature uniqueness and diversity.
The new capital will most likely destroy it...
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They said I was daft for builing the capital (Score:5, Funny)
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Borneo has huge tracts of land.
Hmm... (Score:3)
"Jakarta has become crowded, polluted and is sinking at an alarming rate due to the over-extraction of groundwater. Home to more than 10 million people, it sits on swampy land on the large island of Java."
Hmm... there's gotta be a joke about "draining the swamp" in there somewhere...
Leave plenty of room to grow (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully, the new capital's planners will leave plenty of room for its initial infrastructure to gracefully expand, future infrastructure to go, and nearby land (not all under rigid control) to grow.
For a good example of how cities like this can turn out, look at Brasilia. As much as city planners like to criticize it for being like a wealthy American suburb, it HAS grown into a very nice city... for the 600,000 or so who can actually afford to live there, vs the additional million or so who have to live an hour or more away and commute.
Brasilia's biggest problem is, it's "boxed in" and surrounded by areas that either can't, or will never be allowed to be, developed. Ironically, its other big problem is that it ended up being TOO "nice and perfect". Any change made to increase the amount of housing within Brasilia itself would unquestionably diminish the quality of life for those who already live there, so they have no incentive to allow changes. And they run the country, so nobody ELSE can ram those changes through, either.
Washington DC was equally artificial in its credtion... but Maryland & Virginia provided a badly-needed escape valve beyond the control of the federal government once DC's development pressures exceeded what DC per se could or would accommodate. Brasilia's nearby favelas have grown and gentrified into cities in their own right... but they're kind of like Hialeah, Florida. Hialeah is what you end up with when you start with a poor, mostly-industrial trailer-park outback, then let the planning department take a 40 year coffee break while the city gets overrun by developers whose every whim gets rubber stamp approval. You end up with a million people living in 10 story buildings with septic tanks & wells, hopeless gridlock (that FDOT & Dade County have been trying to fix for 20+ years), and used tire stores in the middle of residential neighborhoods.
For a good example of long-term road-planning done RIGHT, look at Texas. Dallas, in particular. Decades ago, its government planned -- and purchased the ROW for -- a dense network of future freeways. Initially, there were just a pair of 2-lane roads 200 feet apart, with a zone in between where no development was allowed. Later, the pair were made one-way, and possibly widened to 3 lanes each way. When the time came to build the freeway, they built the flyovers & temporarily gave the left lane or two of the original roads an escape route to avoid traffic lights at intersections, then built the remaining lanes & turned them into proper freeways flanked by collector-distributor roads.
Their only major mistake was making the original corridors not *quite* wide enough. To be truly future-proof (without tunneling or double-decking), you need about 100 meters (330 feet), plus some additional clear land around future interchanges. The problem Texans overlooked wasn't the total land needed by the future road, but the fact that someday, you'll have to double or triple its capacity while keeping the original road open (and running at 80-90% capacity) during construction, which ENORMOUSLY complicates your future logistics. The moral: leave plenty of room, and make sure that everything you build leaves room for its inevitable replacement project 25-40 years later.
Moral 2: don't spray people across the entire area from day one. Build the area with monumental government buildings in one place, build the initial administrative buildings about a kilometer away, and build the equivalent of a "complete" small town another kilometer or so away. The third area will someday end up as "old town", but initially, it'll fill in enough to keep the city from feeling like a ghost town while the rest develops. Understand that the future skyscrapers WON'T be going into the "oldest", or even then-densest area. Critical mass, where 10 story buildings get demolished for 100 story buildings, doesn't happen until a few hundred-story buildings have ALREADY gotten built nearby... but those first few buildings almost inevitabl
Let it Sink (Score:3)
"Jakarta has become crowded, polluted and is sinking at an alarming rate due to the over-extraction of groundwater."
I'm not sure how it could have gotten worse than when I visited 37 years ago. Of the roughly fifty countries I've been to, Jakarta was the worst, most overpopulated, filthy, place I've seen. I had a city tour, and other than the national museum, there were literally no redeeming qualities. I went from there to Jogjakarta, and Bali...both were outstanding!
By design... (Score:3)
"a new centre of economic gravity"
It sounds like the government and the critics are in agreement on what moving the capital will do; they just disagree about whether that is a problem or a behavior-is-by-design matter.
10 million people? (Score:3)
The Jakarta metropolitan area has 31 million people [wikipedia.org]. It's the second biggest urban area in the world after Tokyo.
That doesn't mean it's too big to be a capital though. There is no such thing as too big. Just improve the infrastructure (which is cheaper per person than building a new city) and a city can be efficient at 31 million people too.
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I suspect that part of their motivation might be to leave a significant number of these people behind.
Seattle is doing this. Businesses are moving out and leaving the city to the hobos.
preview of sea level rise (Score:2)
Re: preview of sea level rise (Score:2)
Jakarta isn't going to be "abandoned to the sea" any more than New York, London, Amsterdam, or Miami. It's big and rich enough to just obliterate what remains of its "natural environment" and fortify itself until it's a concrete island of skyscrapers not entirely unlike a permanent offshore oil platform.
Even in poor countries like Bangladesh, it's not the big cities you need to worry about. They might endure a few decades of annoyingly-flooded roads, and maybe a destructive flood or two, but eventually, the
Cue Bing Crosby (Score:2)
Nusantara was Jakarta,
Now it's Nusantara, not Jakarta,
Been a long time gone, Jakarta,
Now it's Indonesia delight on a moonlit night.