Design Anthology - Asia Pacific Edition
Ode to the Past
A flâneur is an urban explorer — a connoisseur of the street. In our rotating column, guests share their musings, observations and critiques of the urban environment in cities around the world. In this issue, Elizabeth Pisani goes for a ramble through the old Dutch city of Batavia on the outskirts of Jakarta, discovering a charming local culture amidst ancient relics
The name Jakarta is enough to send you grinding to a halt if you’ve ever visited — and perhaps also if you haven’t. Indonesia’s chaotic first city is like an obese teenager with clogged arteries who continues to stuff in the Big Macs; indeed, the capital’s traffic jams threaten its very survival. Around ten million cars and motorbikes fight for street space in the city, and as citizens cram in another 800,000 each year, vehicles are invading what’s left of the pavements, too. Motorcyclists weave in and out between street vendors, belching exhaust fumes over food stalls, creating a noxious blend of carbon monoxide, turmeric and clove cigarettes. It’s a smell I could recognise anywhere as undeniably Jakarta. And it’s among the many reasons that Indonesia’s capital is not a city for a gentle stroll.
At the same time, the city possesses a certain charm if you know where to look. Forgo the cars and taxis so beloved by residents, hop on a train or express bus and head north to Kota at the end of the line. You’re now among the remnants of the old Dutch city of Batavia. It’s Amsterdam on ketamine: slow-moving and slovenly, in want of care. Gabled buildings, once the proud symbol of the prowess and cupidity of Dutch merchants, slump into putrid canals. Terracotta roofs are pierced and garlanded with weeds. And yet the whole cobblestoned neighbourhood aches with faded grandeur.
In many other cities in the world, such an area would have been quickly gentrified by artists and designers in want of studio space. Coffee shops and fusion restaurants would have followed, bringing architects overseeing the projects with them. In less than a decade, Kota would have transformed into something completely different — and much less unique.
But Jakarta is a law unto itself. The few buildings that have been gussied up are mostly museums: the former city hall of Batavia, now the Jakarta History Museum, full to this day of heavy Dutch furniture and equally weighty portraits; the Netherlands Trading Society, now the economics-focused Bank Mandiri Museum, its stained-glass windows depicting native Indonesians growing coffee and sugar for Dutch planters. A couple of old buildings have been done
up as restaurants for the nostalgia factor, but most of Kota is resolutely neglected — and thus the nicest place in Jakarta to wander through.
On a street corner not far from what used to be Batavia’s main square, a monkey in a pink tutu dances to the music its owner is squeezing out of an old accordion. A wizened lady in a wellworn sarong shuffles by, oblivious, bent under the weight of the bottles bundled together on her back. She’s on her evening rounds selling jamu, herbal potions that calm nerves, restore vitality, attract partners. She’s likely to find a market around the corner, where a group of men and their painted hostesses gyrate to dangdut pop music under the watchful eye of a mountainous minder who has set up a makeshift bar.
These are relics of the Jakarta I knew in the late 1980s, a period of authoritarian kleptocracy, that linger amidst the colonial city. Both eras are now soundly rejected by the vast majority of Jakartans, who have little reason to cherish either. And though I understand why, I can’t help but hope that the city’s slower-paced past will be reclaimed before it vanishes forever.