President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said recently that Indonesia needed to consider moving its capital city as Jakarta had become overburdened (Jakarta Post, Dec 21, 2009).
Relocating capital city of Jakarta is not an innovation since many countries have done similar projects. To name a few, are Turkey (Istanbul to Ankara, 1923) and Brazil (Rio De Janeiro to Brasilia, 1960). The main cause of relocation is also cliche: the existing capital is no longer viable to support the development of the country in terms of economic activities, as well as social political and cultural reasons.
Many capital city are selected based on historical means, including Jakarta. The city formerly known as Batavia has been the central of government activities since colonialism era. The city also located in the island of Java, which touted to carry a great amount of natural resources. As the time goes by, imbalance starts to happen, where other city (and island) in the archipelago is lagging in terms of development because of centralization orientation of former government. For Jakarta itself, the problem of modernization also emerges: traffic jam and pollution, which signs that the city is overburdened.
As a center of economic activities, traffic jam has cause considerable inefficiency for the process itself. People are wasting their time in the congested roads, while the government is having difficulties reforming the city's mass rapid transportation modes. The long time needed by commuters to reach their workplace and going back home -averaged at 4 hours a day- is too precious that the workers could instead work more and increasing their productivity. Not to mention stressed emotions when you have to face the same traffic every now and then.
Pollution is the main problem for everyone's health living in the capital. The fast growing of the capital as the center of social political and culture activities attract migration when it's development orientation is not clearly planned in terms of suburban and industrial areas. Soon, the city was too crowded and the facilities is not enough. Water and land pollution of household garbage, plus the air pollution from the personal vehicle aforementioned, is a time bomb for the country.
Considering these reasons, relocation of capital city and creating a city from a scratch is critical. When many other countries need a lot of time to legislate the proposal as exampled in Japan, it need to be started as soon as possible, because no one knows when the time bomb is exploding in social unrest.
