Building a capital city from scratch

New gen­er­a­tions of smart and sus­tain­able cities could pro­vide answers to the urban prob­lems cre­at­ed by cli­mate change, accord­ing to inter­na­tion­al archi­tects, tech giants and lead­ing politi­cians. But Indone­si­a’s plan to relo­cate its cap­i­tal some 800 miles from Jakar­ta, to a new pur­pose-built cap­i­tal on the island of Bor­neo, will pro­vide an exact­ing test for such inno­va­tion.

As sea lev­els rise, Jakar­ta is sink­ing. The city is sub­sid­ing up to 20 cen­time­tres annu­al­ly due to over-extrac­tion of ground­wa­ter from the swamp-like ter­rain beneath. Locat­ed on the cir­cum-Pacif­ic seis­mic belt, a zone along the rim of the Pacif­ic Ocean known as the Ring of Fire for its fre­quent earth­quakes and tsunamis, 40 per cent of the city is now below sea lev­el.

Jakar­ta, home to ten mil­lion and choked by grid­lock and sea­son­al smog, has been hit by increas­ing­ly fre­quent flash floods, which killed 66 peo­ple in one week in Jan­u­ary.

Pres­i­dent Joko Wido­do has called for a brand-new cap­i­tal to relieve pres­sure, with a $34-bil­lion new city mas­ter plan announced in August 2019 for the forest­ed province of East Kali­man­tan.

The new cap­i­tal, adver­tised by Wido­do as the “next Sil­i­con Val­ley”, is viewed by Indone­sians as both a much-need­ed solu­tion to Jakarta’s ills and a pre­cip­i­tous dream, which might nev­er mate­ri­alise. As the coun­try strug­gles to con­tain one of the dead­liest out­breaks of COVID-19 in Asia, plans to break ground this year have been pushed back to 2023, short­ly before the end of Widodo’s pres­i­den­tial term.

“Indone­sia has this once in a cen­tu­ry chance to take the lessons from our proud his­to­ry and add inno­va­tions from the great­est cities in the world to devel­op a city with har­mo­ny, diver­si­ty and inclu­sive­ness for all,” says Rudy Soepri­ha­di Prawirad­i­na­ta, deputy for region­al devel­op­ment at Indone­si­a’s Plan­ning Min­istry.

But a suc­cess­ful send-off for the man Indone­sians call Jokowi will require the city to quick­ly attract res­i­dents — beyond the country’s politi­cians who will be forced to relo­cate to the new admin­is­tra­tive zone — and dras­ti­cal­ly improve qual­i­ty of life.

Cities’ development driven by transport

“The biggest urban design chal­lenge is the lack of an exist­ing pop­u­la­tion and start­ing a new city from the ground up in a green­field loca­tion,” says Scott Dunn from multi­na­tion­al urban design firm AECOM, cho­sen in Feb­ru­ary to mas­ter­plan the cap­i­tal. “Even with Asia’s rapid urban­i­sa­tion, it takes time for cities to devel­op, mature and become desired des­ti­na­tions.”

Wido­do has assem­bled an over­see­ing com­mit­tee, intend­ed to fast track for­eign invest­ment in the city and guide its devel­op­ment from scratch. Along­side AECOM, the com­mit­tee includes Masayoshi Son, chief exec­u­tive of Japan­ese hold­ing com­pa­ny Soft­Bank, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, for­mer British Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair, and inter­na­tion­al con­sult­ing firms McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny and Nikken Sekkei.

AECOM has learnt from its work in Riyadh, Sau­di Arabia’s fast-grow­ing cap­i­tal, and Shen­zhen, the near­est city in main­land Chi­na to Hong Kong. In Shen­zhen, for exam­ple, rapid growth is being dri­ven by the Guangzhou-Shen­zhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link. Like­wise in Riyadh, AECOM have clus­tered devel­op­ment around trans­port hubs to cre­ate a “mega-metrop­o­lis”, expect­ed to dou­ble in size in a decade, while sus­tain­ably improv­ing live­abil­i­ty and mobil­i­ty.

The goal is to make smart and sus­tain­able cities that can adapt to unpre­dictable pop­u­la­tion growth and shocks like a pan­dem­ic: “A pol­i­cy of tran­sit-ori­ent­ed devel­op­ment, which max­imis­es the hous­ing, employ­ment and enter­tain­ment options with­in walk­ing dis­tance of pub­lic tran­sit, is a good way to achieve that,” says Dunn.

Smart, sustainable urban development

Indonesia’s new cap­i­tal will inevitably bring com­par­isons to pur­pose-built land­marks of past cen­turies, like Wash­ing­ton DC or Brasil­ia. “Some of the best ele­ments of pur­pose-built cap­i­tal cities will be incor­po­rat­ed as we learn from oth­er cities: spa­cious parks, ease of move­ment, mixed-use com­mu­ni­ty zones, inspir­ing pub­lic build­ings and views,” says Prawirad­i­na­ta.

But sus­tain­able urban devel­op­ment today must be planned for its res­i­dents, rather than its iconog­ra­phy, explains Ed Bak­er, direc­tor of archi­tec­ture prac­tice Broad­way Malyan’s Sin­ga­pore stu­dio. “The plan­ning of the great pur­pose-built cap­i­tal cities of the world was often a top-down process and under­pinned by a desire for grand civic ges­tures and mon­u­men­tal archi­tec­ture,” says Bak­er. “But by embrac­ing a peo­ple-first ethos from the out­set, Indone­sia can cre­ate some­thing that is much more mean­ing­ful and reflec­tive of mod­ern lifestyles, envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­sive and resilient to the chal­lenges of cli­mate change.”

AECOM pro­pos­es a “dig­i­tal twin” city to pro­vide real-time infor­ma­tion on res­i­dents’ pref­er­ences as the city grows. “This can help with under­stand­ing pop­u­la­tion growth demands and the right bal­ance of required land use, mobil­i­ty net­works, blue and green open spaces,” says Dunn.

Smart city tech devel­op­ments have typ­i­cal­ly focused on infra­struc­ture where the new cap­i­tal can out­per­form Cen­tral Jakar­ta. Prawirad­i­na­ta says intel­li­gent sys­tems can improve traf­fic grids, pub­lic trans­port, ener­gy effi­cien­cy, and water and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Soft­Bank has offered to invest up to $40 bil­lion in the new cap­i­tal and chief exec­u­tive Son has declared his inter­est in sup­port­ing the adop­tion of lat­est tech­nol­o­gy in smart and sus­tain­able cities, notably arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and open­ing the door to the tech con­glom­er­ate’s devel­op­ments in the inter­net of things and big data.

Smart cities’ sustainability on trial

Geo­graph­i­cal­ly near the heart of the coun­try of more than 270 mil­lion peo­ple, it is hoped the new cap­i­tal will devel­op the sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed island of Bor­neo and bal­ance the arch­i­pel­ago nation, where more than 60 per cent of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty is cur­rent­ly in Java.

The Indone­sian gov­ern­ment has promised to ringfence nat­ur­al reserves on Bor­neo, known as home to the crit­i­cal­ly endan­gered orang­utan, but already defor­est­ed for oil refiner­ies and palm oil plan­ta­tions. Prawirad­i­na­ta says 75 per cent of the city would be retained as nat­ur­al green space, which would mark a boost for bio­di­ver­si­ty from the rough­ly 50 per cent cur­rent­ly forest­ed: ”We will rebuild the for­est, as we design.”

Leonard Siman­jun­tak, coun­try direc­tor for Green­peace Indone­sia, says the city would cre­ate new crises as it mit­i­gates Jakarta’s. He fears the city’s devel­op­ment plan would, over years, be com­pro­mised as it con­nects with near­by Balik­pa­pan, cen­tre of the local oil indus­try.

“While the new cap­i­tal seems to be designed as a tech­no, smart and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly city, it has inher­ent risks of uncon­trol­lable urban sprawl­ing,” says Siman­jun­tak. “And when this hap­pened, a large chunk of for­est areas would already be defor­est­ed, bio­di­ver­si­ty sac­ri­ficed and the remain­ing wildlife would be under tremen­dous threat.”

Still, ques­tions remain, among Indone­sians who have been promised a more live­able cap­i­tal since 1957 when a move was dis­cussed by Indone­si­a’s first pres­i­dent Sukarno, if the city will ever be built.

If eco­nom­ic recov­ery from COVID-19 takes a few years, there will be van­ish­ing­ly lit­tle time for progress to be made before the 2024 elec­tions, says Bill Sul­li­van, senior for­eign coun­sel at Jakar­ta-based law firm Chris­t­ian Teo & Part­ners, who advis­es investors in Indone­sia.

“In a bet­ter fis­cal envi­ron­ment, it makes sense, because one of Widodo’s basic ideas is that infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment is key to solv­ing Indone­si­a’s endem­ic prob­lem of unem­ploy­ment,” says Sul­li­van.

“It’s pos­si­ble that if noth­ing hap­pens before 2024, it might still get some trac­tion, but there will def­i­nite­ly be a risk that it’ll just cease to be an urgent pri­or­i­ty for the next pres­i­dent.”

From a cli­mate per­spec­tive alone, Siman­jun­tak of Green­peace believes qui­et­ly scrap­ping the plans would actu­al­ly be for the best. “Indone­sia does­n’t need to build anoth­er Naypyi­daw,” he says, refer­ring to Myanmar’s pur­pose-built cap­i­tal, unveiled 15 years ago and still large­ly desert­ed. “Even if it’s a smart and sus­tain­able ver­sion of it.”