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posted by martyb on Monday August 26 2019, @11:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the can-you-say-land-speculation? dept.

Jakarta Is Crowded And Sinking, So Indonesia Is Moving Its Capital To Borneo

Indonesian President Joko Widodo says his country will create a new capital city on the island of Borneo, revealing new details about his plan to move the central government out of Jakarta. The capital's current location faces a number of problems, including the fact that it's sinking.

Widodo's announcement Monday comes months after he said he wanted to move the capital, seeking a place that can offer a break from Jakarta's environmental challenges as well as its relentlessly gridlocked traffic.

While rising seawater levels from climate change are a widespread concern for island and coastal areas worldwide, experts say Jakarta has played a central role in its own predicament. "Jakarta's problems are largely man-made," NPR's Merrit Kennedy reported earlier this year. "The area's large population has extracted so much groundwater that it has impacted the ground levels, and many surface water resources are polluted."

Jakarta has a population of around 10 million, with 20 million more in the greater metropolitan area.

Also at NYT and CNN.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:06AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:06AM (#885882)

    Brazil built a new capital in the rainforest, Ivory Coast moved to capital #4 when the leader wanted his birthplace to be capital, Nigeria moved to a new capital. Makes sense to leave the overcrowded old capital behind and start a new one. Eventually it will attract migrants again, but the old capital will still have much economic activity to give many people a living.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @04:47AM (#885947)

    Your list is entirely negroidal countries. Indonesians are white except for 107k orange men in the forest.

  • (Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:01AM

    by istartedi (123) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @05:01AM (#885953) Journal

    The USA didn't use Washington as the official capital until it was ready in 1800. Before that, Congress convened in a number of places. Most notably, Philadelphia for about 10 years.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinho on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:07AM

    by Zinho (759) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:07AM (#885981)

    The jury's still out on Brasilia. Short list of factoids:
    * It's not in the rainforest; the terrain is more like grassland than forest. Just because it's central doesn't mean it's jungle.
    * Whether it's attracting migrants or not is debatable. The city was planned out to have a population of 500,000; today it's hovering around 300,000. Also, 800,000 workers commute into and out of the city daily by bus because someone's gotta mow the lawns, but laborers can't afford housing in the city.
    * Since all of the buildings were built within 5 years of each other, they're all aging together and the Brazilian government may soon face a crisis when the repair costs all hit at once.
    * There is no industry in the city to speak of. Its only export is eggs, all other food and goods are imported.
    * Most people who study such things consider Brasilia to be an urban planning failure. [duckduckgo.com].

    You are correct that Rio de Janeiro still has plenty of people living there and a thriving economy. If Brasilia is abandoned as a government center, however, it's likely to become a ghost town.

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