Capital of Indonesia


is the capital of Indonesia according to the Act Number 10 of 1964. Located on the island of Java, Jakarta was formerly Batavia, the capital during the Dutch colonial period. In the early 20th century, there was an effort by the Dutch East Indies government to relocate the capital from Batavia to Bandung. During Indonesia's struggle for independence, the government of Indonesia moved the capital to Yogyakarta and Bukittinggi where it remained for a short time until the restoration to Jakarta.
In 2019, President Joko Widodo announced a plan to relocate the capital to Kalimantan on the island of Borneo during his annual state of the union address, at the parliament. Part of Kutai Kartanegara Regency and Penajam North Paser Regency in East Kalimantan will be taken for a new province-level planned city. Relocation of the capital will move the capital to a more central location within Indonesia and is part of a strategy of reducing developmental inequality between Java and other islands in the Indonesian archipelago; it will also reduce Jakarta's burden as Indonesia's hub. In August 2019, the government announced that while the capital will be moved, $40 billion will be spent on saving Jakarta from sinking in the next decade.

Timeline

DateCapitalNotes
17 08 1945JakartaSukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed the Indonesian independence in Jakarta, which became the de facto capital of the Republic of Indonesia.
04 01 1946YogyakartaJakarta was occupied by the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration and the capital was moved to Yogyakarta. The Indonesian government relocated to the city using a train in the middle of the night.
19 12 1948BukittinggiYogyakarta was occupied by the Dutch military during Operation Kraai, while both the president and vice president, Sukarno and Hatta, were captured and exiled on Bangka Island. The Pemerintahan Darurat Republik Indonesia, an emergency government led by Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, was established in Bukittinggi.
06 07 1949YogyakartaSukarno and Hatta returned from exile to Yogyakarta. Sjafruddin Prawiranegara officially dissolved the emergency government on 13 July 1949. Yogyakarta continued as the capital of the Republic of Indonesia, which was a state within the Republic of the United States of Indonesia. Jakarta served as the federal capital.
17 08 1950JakartaThe United States of Indonesia was dissolved by Sukarno and Jakarta once again became the de facto capital of the Republic of Indonesia.
28 08 1961JakartaJakarta became the de jure capital of Indonesia with the Presidential Decree Number 2 of 1961. It was later strengthened by the Indonesian law Number 10 of 1964.
26 08 2019JakartaPresident Joko Widodo officially announced to relocate the capital to East Kalimantan. Part of Kutai Kartanegara Regency and Penajam North Paser Regency will be taken for a new province-level planned city which is expected to be inaugurated in 2024.

Colonial period and early republic era

The Dutch colonial settlement of Batavia was established in 1621. Initially, it was a European-styled walled city crisscrossed by Dutch-style canals located in a low-lying coastal swamp area. The poor sanitation and weak water drainage system made the city unhealthy, infested with malaria, cholera, and dysentery. In 1808, Daendels decided to quit the by-then dilapidated and unhealthy Old Town. A new town centre was subsequently built further to the south, near the estate of Weltevreden. Batavia thereby became a city with two centres: Kota as the hub of business, where the offices and warehouses of shipping and trading companies were located; while Weltevreden became the new home for the government, military, and shops. These two centres were connected by the Molenvliet Canal and a road that ran alongside the waterway.
In the early 20th century, there was a decision by the Dutch East Indies government to relocate the capital from Batavia to Bandung. The idea was to separate the busy trading port or the commercial centre from the new administrative and political centre. By the 1920s the plan to transfer the capital to Bandung was underway. As the city began the master-plan of a well-planned new city, some government buildings, telecommunication, railway networks, Postal system, defence-military headquarters and many others were constructed and headquartered in Bandung until the present day, such as Gedung Sate which was planned as the government administrative centre of the Dutch East Indies. The plan, however, failed due to the Great Depression and the outbreak of World War II.
On 5 March 1942, Batavia fell to the Japanese. The Dutch formally surrendered to the Japanese occupation forces on 9 March 1942, and the rule of the colony was transferred to Japan. The city was renamed Jakarta. After the collapse of Japan in 1945, the area went through a period of transition and upheaval during the Indonesian national struggle for independence. During the Japanese occupation and from the perspective of the Indonesian nationalists who declared independence on 17 August 1945, the city was renamed Jakarta.
Following the surrender of the Japanese, Indonesia declared its independence on 17 August 1945. The proclamation was enacted at Jalan Pegangsaan Timur No. 56, Central Jakarta, with Suwiryo acting as the committee chairman. Suwiryo was recognised as the first mayor of Jakarta Tokubetsu Shi. The position was soon altered to Pemerintah Nasional Kota Jakarta. On 19 September 1945, Sukarno held his Indonesian independence and anti-colonialism/imperialism speech, during Rapat Akbar or grand meeting at Lapangan Ikada, now the Merdeka Square. The grand meeting would start a period of national revolution in Indonesia.

National revolution period

During the Indonesian struggle for independence, the capital of the republic was moved several times — prompted by political and military emergency — as the seat of the republic in exile during the war. The capital moved from Jakarta to Yogyakarta and then to Bukittinggi as the seat of the Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia. By 1949, the national capital of the republic was returned to Jakarta.

Jakarta as the ''de jure'' capital of Indonesia

During Sukarno's presidency, Jakarta was established and developed as the capital of the new republic. In 1957, Sukarno laid the foundation and street grid layout of Palangkaraya as a new planned capital of Central Kalimantan province. Sukarno however, foresaw the new city as the possible new national capital in the future. The vast available area and its geographic location in the centre of the archipelago was the main advantage of the city. Nevertheless, Sukarno seemed to favour Jakarta instead. In the late 1950s to the first half of the 1960s, he filled Jakarta with monuments and statues. Numbers of monumental projects were conceived, planned, and initiated during his administration, including Monumen Nasional, Istiqlal mosque, DPR/MPR Building, and Gelora Bung Karno stadium. Sukarno also filled Jakarta with nationalistic monuments and statues, including Selamat Datang Monument, Pemuda Monument at Senayan, Dirgantara Monument at Pancoran, and the Irian Jaya Liberation Monument at Lapangan Banteng. Although many of the projects were completed later, Sukarno is credited for shaping Jakarta's monuments and landmarks. He desired Jakarta to be the beacon of a powerful new nation.
In 1966, Jakarta was granted its official status as DKI Djakarta, or the Special Capital Region. It promoted the rate of development of government office buildings and foreign embassies. Rapid development created the need for a master plan in order to regulate Jakarta's growth. Since 1966, Jakarta has steadily grown into a modern metropolis.
During the highly centralised New Order regime of Sukarno's successor Suharto, Jakarta was further established as the political and economic core of the nation. Prompted with rapid development and urbanisation, Jakarta attracted large numbers of new settlers from all over the archipelago, with the majority coming from rural Javanese towns. High-rise buildings sprung up, especially in Jakarta's commercial and financial centres along Thamrin, Sudirman and Kuningan avenues. As a result, since the 1970s, the population of Jakarta spiked tremendously and spiled into areas surrounding the capital. The Jabodetabek or Greater Jakarta region has become the largest and the most densely populated urban agglomeration in Southeast Asia.

New capital proposals throughout the decades

Proposals to move the Indonesian capital from Jakarta to other locations have been discussed since the Sukarno presidency. Massive overpopulation, coupled with a lack of urban infrastructures such as public transportation facilities; gridlock traffic; encroachment of urban areas replacing open green spaces; spread of slums within the city; over-extraction of groundwater, and poor water drainage systems: all of these factors have led to ecological degradation of the city. As groundwater was depleted, the city slowly sunk lower; parts of Northern Jakarta are below sea level and regularly suffer from flooding. Jakarta experienced massive floods in 2007, and again in 2013. In 2010, the debate continued about the creation of a new capital that would be separated from the urban, economic, and commercial centre of the country. Former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono supported the idea to create a new political and administrative centre of Indonesia, due to Jakarta's environmental and overpopulation problems.
Two major alternative approaches have been mooted over the years: One was to move the national capital altogether by creating an entirely new planned city, similar to the relocation of the Brazilian capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia, a planned city, in 1960. The other was to keep Jakarta as the official capital but create a separate administrative centre, as when Malaysia moved its federal administrative centre to Putrajaya. Suggested locations for the first proposal have included:
If Jakarta were kept as the official capital, administrative centres would have been moved to other nearby locations. Suggested locations include:
In April 2017, the Joko Widodo administration contemplated the idea of moving the capital from Jakarta. The government planned to conclude assessing potential alternative sites that would be suitable to become Indonesia's new capital by the end of 2017. According to an official from the Ministry of National Development Planning of Indonesia, the government was determined to move the Indonesian capital out of Java. In April 2019, it was announced that Jakarta would no longer be the capital of Indonesia in the future, with a 10-year plan to transfer all government offices to a new capital city. The National Development Planning Ministry recommended the three provinces of South, Central, and East Kalimantan as all fitting the requirements for a new capital, including being relatively free from earthquakes and volcanoes. Shortly after the plan was announced in April 2017, Jokowi visited two alternative locations in Kalimantan, Bukit Soeharto in East Kalimantan and the Triangle Area near Palangkaraya in Central Kalimantan.
On 26 August 2019, Jokowi announced that the new capital would be partly in the Penajam North Paser Regency and partly in the Kutai Kartanegara Regency, both in East Kalimantan. The National Development Planning Ministry announced that the move would cost an estimated Rp466 trillion, and that the government intended to cover 19% of the cost, the remainder coming mainly from public-private partnerships and direct investment by both state-owned enterprises and the private sector. The planned move still awaits final parliamentary approval.

Proposed design and name

Then Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing organized capital city design contest from 3 October to 20 December 2019. Nagara Rimba Nusa by URBAN+ was officially announced as the winner on 23 December 2019. The government will collaborate the design of the winning team with that of second and third placed teams, as well as international designers, in order to sharpen the final design process up to March or April 2020. Designers from at least 3 countries, namely China, Japan, and the United States had offered to involve in the design. The name which had been suggested since about 3 months earlier is very identical with the winner's main concept.

Tsunami risk

A potential tsunami risk in the region has been identified by geologists, based on evidence of multiple ancient underwater landslides.