Moving a City Before It Sinks
The leader of Indonesia believes the capital cannot be saved.
Before he led the world’s fourth most populous country, the president of Indonesia was consumed by an even more challenging mission: saving Jakarta.
For two years, Joko Widodo served as the governor of a capital city that seemed to teeter on the brink of ruin. Since Indonesia’s independence in 1945, Jakarta had expanded from less than one million people to roughly 30 million. It had grown tall with skyscrapers built with fortunes made from timber, palm oil, natural gas, gold, copper, tin. But the capital had run out of space. It grew thick with traffic and pollution. Most of all, Jakarta was sinking, as thirsty residents drained its marshy aquifers and rising sea waters lapped its shores. Forty percent of the Indonesian capital now lies below sea level.
Raised in a riverside slum in a smaller city, without family ties or a military background to propel him to power, Mr. Joko derived his political strength from his connection with ordinary Indonesians. In Jakarta, he made a habit of canvassing poor neighborhoods about their needs.
So Mr. Joko rolled up his sleeves and set about trying to fix the city. He raised sea walls and improved public transport. He later promoted the construction of a constellation of artificial islands to break the waters hitting Jakarta. His entire career — first as a carpenter and a furniture exporter and then as mayor of his hometown, Solo — had been built on building.
In Jakarta, however, all the Sisyphean dredging, the endless concrete slathered on sea walls, the temporary solutions could not raise the city above the sea’s reach. And so Mr. Joko has turned to a different solution: If Jakarta cannot be saved, he will start over.
Mr. Joko is using his presidential authority to forsake the capital on the slender island of Java and construct a new one on Borneo, the
world’s third largest island, about 1,300 kilometers away. The new capital is to be called Nusantara, meaning “archipelago” in ancient Javanese and befitting an unlikely nation of more than 17,000 islands scattered between two oceans.
Indonesia encompasses hundreds of languages and ethnic groups. Some of its regions are governed by Shariah-inspired rules, gripped by separatist fervor or animated by Indigenous traditions. It is also a secular democracy with the world’s largest Muslim citizenry, a sizable Christian minority and several other official faiths. Although deadly sectarian conflict has flared over the decades, Indonesia has stayed together. A new capital city for a place with such disparities and diversity presents both a challenge and a chance for reinvention.
Nusantara won’t be just any planned city, Mr. Joko asserts, but a green metropolis run on renewable energy, where there are no choking traffic jams and people can stroll and bike along verdant paths. The new capital, known in Indonesia by its abbreviation, I.K.N., will be a paradigm for adapting to a warming planet. And it will be a hightech city, he says, attracting digital nomads and millennials who will purchase stylish apartments with cryptocurrency.
“We want to build a new Indonesia,” Mr. Joko said. “We want a new work ethic, new mindset, new green economy.”
Critics of the plan note that the government will commit to only 20 percent of the projected cost. The rest of the funding is supposed to come from domestic and foreign investors.
Still, Mr. Joko remains popular, with an approval rating of 76 percent in a recent poll. Political watchers wonder whether Mr. Joko will try to extend his presidency beyond 2024, the end of his term, giving him time to see the project through. He has also begun to align himself with another presumed presidential contender who is supportive of the plan.
During the pandemic, Mr. Joko pushed through a national law that covers the smallest details for Nusantara, including the minimum size of a civil servant’s living quarters. He got more than $30 billion earmarked for the project.
Mr. Joko hopes to inaugurate Nusantara in August 2024, with the unveiling of the presidential palace and other key buildings. But while bulldozers are clearing the land, not a single showcase structure has been completed. And by the end of next year, 60,000 people are supposed to move in, but not a single residential tower has been built.
“As an urban planner, I can say that there is some skepticism,” said Deden Rukmana, a planning expert at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University. “But as an Indonesian, I think we need to prove to ourselves that we can do it.”
“I.K.N. is not just being built for Indonesians,” he added. “It’s being built for the world. That’s why it must succeed.”
On Mr. Joko’s recent visit to the site, he described where the parliament building and the presidential palace — shaped like the mythical bird Garuda, a national symbol — would be. There was little evidence of actual construction. Mr. Joko’s entourage marched on. There, he explained, would be the national mosque and other places of worship for a multifaith society. Nearly two million residents will flock to the new capital within a couple of decades, the president promised.
Mr. Joko described how daily needs would be met within a 10-minute stroll or ride. In Jakarta, 16 percent of the population uses public transport; he is aiming for 80 percent in Nusantara.
But construction is being rushed to meet a tight deadline. Architects were given 10 days to submit proposals for some of the capital’s showpiece buildings. The first phase of the city is expected to be completed in just two years. The urgency is born of anxiety: Without Mr. Joko’s imprimatur, the capital project could founder, leaving the jungle to reclaim the land.
Borneo is home to some of the world’s largest tracts of primary rainforest. Much of the future capital’s sprawl is on land that was supposed to be protected. Environmental groups say they still have not seen an environmental impact assessment. Although local officials trumpet the area’s commitment to conservation, timber, paper and oil palm plantations have spread. A national park is pockmarked with coal mines. A crackdown last year on illegal mining had little effect.
These facts on the ground show the chasm between Mr. Joko’s ambitions — a clean, green city for a clean, green nation! — and the reality of a country where the destruction of virgin rainforest is propelled by rampant corruption.
Mr. Joko has repeatedly called for moratoriums on forest-clearing, and he has had success in taming the theft of rainforest for the palm oil industry in parts of Indonesia. But local leaders have autonomy to issue permits to extract natural resources.
On a hill above the construction site for the presidential palace, a man named Roni stepped down from his truck and wiped away sweat. He was glad for the work ferrying loads of earth. It paid $110 a month, better than his previous hours spent at a coal mine.
Mr. Roni is Dayak — a broad term for a grouping of Indigenous peoples in Borneo.
No other president, Mr. Roni said, had bothered to visit local Dayak communities. No other president had committed to providing so many jobs. And no other leader had made them feel that their little part of a big island was as much a part of Indonesia as Java was.
Mr. Joko, like every president of Indonesia save one, is Javanese. Moving the capital to Borneo is a statement of intent, an attempt to redistribute the country’s economic and demographic heft away from a single island. “Indonesia is more than Jakarta,” Mr. Joko said.
Mr. Roni supports the president’s plan. “If my children and my grandchildren can experience living in the capital of Indonesia that will be amazing.”