Nagara Rimba Nusa: A Take on Indonesia's New Capital City

Thank you for that context. Do you have recommendations for good resources to read more about this?

> relocate, most of Jakarta's population there

Haven't heard that one, at most what the gov want to relocate are the govt apparatus. It's certainly more logical and easier to "relocate" the economy and commerce part of Jakarta to the satellite cities (Jabodetabek). Relocating almost 20 mill population to Borneo is nor feasible.

Also for those who don’t know, the primary cause of this is overuse of ground water. Which is the same reason massive areas in California are sinking (though not directly into the sea). Jakarta has terrible water infrastructure, and a lot of its supply comes from haphazard and unregulated use of groundwater.

The discussion of relocating the capital however is limited to the actual government institutions. It’s also important to realize that there is no such city as Jakarta, the land subsidence issue is mostly limited to North Jakarta (which is actually the name of a city). So none of the discussions about ‘moving Jakarta’ are actually referring to the enormous metropolitan area around Jakarta, but specifically about the city of North Jakarta.

I have yet to find a walkable city in Indonesia, let alone South Asia that is actually walkable in comparison to European cities, like Amsterdam or Berlin. There is a major difference in population between those two though.

Istanbul has a similar sized population, and it felt more walkable and just a few good in public transportatiin than Jakarta (having spent a couple months in both cities). It may be due to good tram+marmaray in Istanbul compared to the BRT in Jakarta, and dedicated bus lanes don't cut it to Jakarta's traffic.

Nobody walks in Indonesia, it is too damn hot. That's why traffic is such a big problem, a lot of the walking traffic is replaced by vehicle traffic and so the cities are starting at a fundamental disadvantage.