Jakarta – Unscrupulous officials who fast-track developments without concern for planning laws are favoring big developers over common Indonesians and are choking the productivity of cities, costing the country trillions in lost rupiah, experts say.
"Government officials, as both regulators and operators of spatial city planning, issue permits without thinking about the long-term side effects of commercialization," said Aprianto Usman, a member of Indonesian Alumni of Canadian Institutions.
He said bad or no spatial planning led to the inequitable situation in Jakarta where developers often built where they pleased, invariably displacing or inconveniencing nearby communities with the traffic chaos and pollution the buildings created.
At the same time, developers ignore government regulations compelling them to create low-cost housing for the poor.
"There is no punishment for officials who violate laws about spatial planning because of the poor enforcement in this country. Everything is done for the sake of capital," Aprianto told The Jakarta Post during a spatial planning seminar on Tuesday.
Overseas, business developers generally built big malls in suburban areas, Aprianto said. The reason for this was to avoid creating inner-city traffic jams and to enable these malls to function as recreation destinations.
However, here: "the time we could use for being productive is used up on the streets because of the traffic congestion," he said. "We should consider those malls as we would regular markets in cities. Everywhere there is a market, there is always a traffic jam surrounding the place," Aprianto said.
He noted that spatial planning laws in Indonesia were generally flouted because adhering to them would cost developers more. "Actually, if the planning is good and we implement the plans correctly, the cost is cheaper compared to fixing those problems occurring due to the (later) chaotic implementation of planning."
Aprianto and the Communication Forum of Foreign Alumni (FORKA) have been helping the Directorate General for Spatial Planning to revise the 1992 Town Planning Law, which they say is unsustainable. FORKA, which consists of 12 groups of graduates from institutions in 12 countries, aims to make Indonesia a healthier place to live.
In the revision of the law, the group has suggested people are educated about the positive impacts of good city planning.
Directorate head Hermanto Dadak said the development of shopping malls and big supermarkets should be focused in suburban areas, such as Bogor, Tangerang, Bekasi and Bumi Serpong Damai.
"Theoretically, 60 percent of the communities who live in those satellite cities should be able to live and work without leaving their areas," Hermanto told the Post. "That has not happened yet. Those neighboring cities function more like dormitories rather than satellite cities," he said.
Hermanto noted that vehicles could once make round trips from Cikarang, an industrial center, to Tanjung Priok in a single day. These days, because of to all the malls constructed along the way and heavy commuter traffic, it would take two days to make the circuit, he said.
In the development of the new spatial planning bill, the FORKA team has included measures to prevent officials from taking bribes and issuing illegal permits. It said the development of green areas within cities was a better choice than building malls.