Will Meikarta be ‘Indonesian’ Ordos Kangbashi?
These two days have been such a helluva experience for me. Travelling back and forth between Jakarta and Bandung in a short time, meeting some great alumi of ‘Perkumpulan Studi Ilmu Kemasyarakatan’ (Bang Lutfi Alkatiri, Bang Seno, and Mas Didik Fortunadi), strolling down the urban slums of a smelly, stinky, yet somewhat attractive alley, and others priceless experiences which gave me some thoughts to carry on. My special gratitude goes to Catherine Anggreini (Mechanical Engineering, 2015) and Marcellino La’lang (Civil Engineering, 2016) for the hospitality through the journey. This writing I dedicated to both of you.
I will not blabbering about the details of my journey, ain’t nobody got time to care about that. It is (kind of) dull, to tell people only about what you have done and your feeling. Writing is about sharing your opinion, ideas, and point of view. That is what will make our intellectual culture. Within this not-so-long article, I would like share to you about the concern I had regarding the current mammoth-project development of international-scale, epic, mixed-use new city, Meikarta.
Throughout the land-trip I took yesterday, I kept waiting to have firsthand experience of what the project construction was like. And, I was simply astonished. It’s a trully humongous mega-project. It took almost one minute to pass its construction site while driving in the highway. Meikarta ( Mandarin: Mei, beautiful; Javanese: Karta, proseperity) has come into existence as the biggest township in Indonesia.
The establishment of Meikarta is held under the name of Indonesia’s diversified conglomerate, Lippo Group. With the project worth sums up to Rp 278 trillion, Meikarta is being dubbed as ‘ Indonesia’s Silicon Valley’. And, along with the other cities around,the project aligns with Indonesian central government’s vision to make the Jakarta-Bekasi-Cikarang-Bandung area ‘The Shenzhen, the breakneck development of the southern Chinese city, of Indonesia’.
Meikarta will be built along the Jakarta-Bandung corridor near the Bekasi-Cikarang industrial hub, where thousands of factories, are based. Placing Meikarta at the heart of Indonesia’s economic activity. The Indonesian central government’s current plan is to build transportation hubs and infrastructure in the area to make access to Meikarta easier. These plans include Jakarta-Cikampek Elevated Highway, Patimban Port, and Kertajati International Airport, some of which are already underway.
According to its own publication, as many as 40,000 people has bought Meikarta’s unit of houses and apartments. The number is still fairly small compared to the predicted capacity of the city accomodation, which is around 2 million people. With the tagline ‘The world of ours’ and tons of its facility such as international olympic center, LRT, MRT, grid-system, opera theatres, art and cultural center, and New York city-like-central park, Meikarta will surely surpass any expectation before.
But, as frequently as many people have voiced their concerns and/or expressions to this project, I will also contribute a thought to discuss the issue. To be completely honest, my greatest fear is Meikarta, as far from the envisioned ideals, will come to be a ghost city. Of course, before I came to this conclusion, I have done some research but it’s not a systematic inquiry or other so called investigation. The explaination of the analysis will be depicted later, but let us take a quick check on China’s largest ghost city, Ordos Kangbashi.
Built for over a million people, Ordos Kangbashi was predicted to be the crowning glory of Inner Mongolia. However it was doomed to incompletion. This futuristic metropolis now rises empty out of the deserts of northern China. Only two percents of its buildings were ever filled. The rest has largely been left to deserted, abandoned construction, earning Ordos the title of China’s Ghost City.
The city of Ordos is a heavily stylised population centre located close to the Ordos Desert, and it’s one of the main cities of Inner Mongolia. This area is famed for its rapidly expanding population and developing urban areas (the region of Inner Mongolia boasting a higher GDP than even Beijing itself). When a conglomeration of property developers began planning a new urban centre just outside the existing city of Ordos in 2003, the Kangbashi New Area, Ordos seemed set to become the futuristic jewel in China’s crown of city states.
However, nobody quite anticipated how quickly this new development would fall flat on its face. Deadlines weren’t met, loans went unpaid, and investors pulled out before projects could be completed. Leaving entire streets of unfinished buildings. The ridiculous cost of accommodation in this dream city put off many would-be inhabitants, so that even fully completed apartments became difficult to sell. Nowadays the Kangbashi district, planned to accommodate a population in excess of one million, is home to a lonely 20,000 people, leaving almost all of the 355-square kilometre site either under construction or abandoned altogether.
And there comes my reason why the title of this article is “Will Meikarta be The Next Ordos Kangbashi?” I am simply giving question to about the future of this hyper-booming project. Upon looking at how similar both of the projects, in terms of conditions, I consider not to be amazed of how big the number given.
Declining purchasing power, property bubble, and environmental destruction, these are only a handful of negative consequences this country’s over-rapid infrastructure growth has caused (the effect of Joko Widodo’s policy to put infrastructure as the top priority). And property bubble, in particular, despite the country’s increasingly growing middle-class strata, has also become a tremendous headache for the central government. For this reason, the costs of the property are predicted to be highly painful to pay.
Moreover, Meikarta also has also has issues related to the construction permits with the local government. This project, which was developed on 500 hectares land, is said to have not been licensed yet by the provincial government, making all of its marketing and construction activities are considered to be illegal.
Not to say the West Java 2018 regional elections, Meikarta will be one of the issues raised by the candidates. Politics and economics may be has a very close connection. And, it will be more likely to link when you are talking about most of the Indonesia’s taipans (some reference address these taipans as “the Nine Dragons”). James Riady, as the leader of the Lippo Group, also mentioned as one of the nine dragons, will possibly involved in this direct democracy mechanism.
In addition, for my last analysis, the most part of the investation Meikarta, is held by foreign investors such as Singapore, Middle-East, Japan, and United States. This will lead to the volatility of the financial stability of the project itself (tends to fluctuate dramatically).
Imagine scenes of skyscrapers, shopping malls, office towers, and government buildings, and there are barely any persons living inside, plain dead concrete structures, with a complete void surrounding everything. It will be a total loss to this country if Meikarta become the Indonesian ‘Ordos Kangbashi’. Ghost cities, in short, are merely tips of a huge iceberg, of something deeply going wrong with the economy. Let us hope all of worries will not happen in the near future.
Alfatehan Septianta
Bandung, 3rd September 2017
09.46 PM
