Suburb in the sky: how Jakartans built an entire village on top of a mall

I guess relative to other options in Jakara, Cosmo Park is quite nice. However, the air quality in the city is so bad from Monday morning until Saturday afternoon that I cannot imagine jogging or doing other outdoor activities.

The air burns the throat and smells like fire and exhaust (especially from the millions of 2-cycle engine scooters with no emissions systems). Like other cities with terrible air, Jakarta will have to do something significant to become more livable; otherwise, local lifespans will dive (are diving, but will become obvious) over the next 20 years.

Decently interesting article (more of an interesting subject than the article itself), but I hate these current trends in article titles. There's absolutely nothing in this article about how they built it.

Suburbs in the sky are unusual because they're not very space-efficient, but fortress-like apartments-atop-mall complexes are quite common in Jakarta. Here's one of the first, the Ciputra Mall complex (mall, hotel, apartments), which any visitor to Jakarta will have seen because it's right next to the highway from the airport:

https://travel.detik.com/travel-news/d-2146644/selama-banjir...

And its newer, flashier cousins Ciputra Worlds 1 (built), 2 (u/c) and 3 (planned):

http://www.ciputraworldjakarta.com/cwj1/

Given the track record of improvised solutions in Asia I wonder as a layman if the building engineers gave the green light for this with good conscience.

I mean the mall was clearly built first, with a certain structural integrity in mind. And then an entire village was built on top of it.

Not really a 'village' like the one in the article, but I recently discovered that there's a row of townhouses on top of a shopping centre in central Melbourne: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-37.8256146,144.9495821,168a...

I feel like the full-size two-lane roads go well past clever and into fetishizing suburbia. The roads and car ports take up a huge amount of precious space and force you to drive up and down 10 stories of ramp every time, instead of parking lower in the garage (possibly with reserved spaces, the place is expensive enough for that) and taking the elevator. I guess it's handy when moving in/out, but again, for the cost, they could provide workers with motorized carts to move your stuff for you. Just seems really impractical with no upside, all to make you feel like you're having an "authentic suburban experience" or something.

Especially note the way the road on the right side of the pic runs right up to the dropoff, well past the last carport entrance, with sidewalk and road markings all the way. They're selling the image of a chunk of suburbia sliced out and airlifted into the city.

Is this for lease or can people buy these houses? If they do buy them, what does that even mean? Do they own the land? And what happens if the mall people decide that it is no longer profitable?

I mean, I really love the idea to live there, but there are so many questions that the article didn't answer!

There used to be similar housing above the arndale shopping centre (which got removed after the bombing in 96)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-13378696

This was quiet interesting to hear the reactions of locals who live in cosmo park. An interesting concept.

Wow this is so cool, looks like something from Altered Carbon or some sci-fi video game!

Not cheap, for the rich - https://www.jakarta-apartment.net/category/apartment/cosmo-p...

Don't know why the article has no pics with cars in it since all the townhouses have car parks.

Interesting to know what the PM 2.5 is.