To park or not to park, Jakarta has the answer

SOME CAN enjoy their vast car ports, some drop off their vehicles inside apartments’ multi-storey parking buildings, but a fraction others will just have to do with residual space turned into commercial parking lots.

Living in a city—wait, make it a country—heavily dependent on private cars, one just cannot resist the temptation of owning one’s own vehicle, setting aside the supposedly logical requirement of first owning a space to park the car. People can make do without a home of their own, but they surely refuse to give up their cars, even if it means that they have to struggle to find a safe enough parking lot to park at night. Some of these people live in rental rooms where every inch of available space is turned into sleeping quarters that generate money, leaving no room for those taking their cars with them.

But for Jakarta, a city of 10 million “creative” inhabitants, there will always be a blessing in disguise to all of its problems.

Several vacant lots in South Jakarta’s Kalibata and Mampang, as well as others widespread in Central Jakarta’s Palmerah and East Jakarta’s Kramat Jati, are solid proofs that a man’s problem is another man’s business opportunity. A 1,500-square-meter dump of Kalibata found a new life when several locals identified a more profitable function for it: a parking space for cars belonging to those who rent rooms in nearby areas. It may previously be filled with piles of garbage with flies flying around, but now it is home to some 40 cars after office hours.

Some of the people who use the parking lot have more than one car, informed an officer from Arisba Foundation, which manages the parking lot. In Kalibata, a 12-square meter room for one man costs between Rp 300,000 to Rp 600,000 a month, while space for a car, measuring half the size of those rooms, costs Rp 150,000 a month.

A similar business resides in Pondok Jaya in Mampang, South Jakarta. It also started from the business of renting rooms for workers who either live outside Jakarta or live in the suburbs and can no longer stand commuting every day. A retired army officer decided that his corner home with vast yard was too big for him and his wife alone.

At first, he only built an extension at the side of his home, consisting of around a dozen rooms for rent. A 200-square meter beside the extension wing was initially planned for another set of rooms. That is until those renting the rooms started taking their cars along with them. Later on, the owner of the house decided that providing parking space could still be as profitable as building more rooms, thus the vacant lot was turned into a space rentable for Rp 150,000 to Rp 200,000 a month. Space for cars, of course, where the security guaranteed, the owner said. And the cars parked there are not only those of the people that rent the rooms, as a neighbor – a small car rental owner – decides that he could also use some extra space for his extra cars. Apparently, prior to deciding to open a car rental business, he forgot to allocate first some space for the cars. But, once again, when it comes to the question of to park or not to park, Jakarta has the answer.

Japan might have its own solution for the scarcity of private night parking lots by letting residents of a certain area chip in to develop a parking lot for their cars or opt for the more expensive hydraulic garage system, but Jakartans have their own way to answer problems.

When you live in a barely planned city, you respond impulsively and according to needs.

When it comes to parking problem, it depends on how you see it. It could be a problem, it could be an opportunity. The glass might be half full or half empty, they say. And Jakartans always have that spark of creativity when looking into its urban problems. But, actually the underlying problems are not as simple as that.

We can go on and on about how Indonesia and Jakarta as its capital are dependent on the automotive industry, the side effect of a political choice to let Japan be our largest donor until today.

Back in the 1970s, our large population and cheap labor were like sugar to Japan’s automotive giants. The latter became their production tool, while the former serve as a seemingly inexhaustible market. The number of motorized vehicles in the capital has reached 4.5 millions, with 600,000 more coming in from Greater Jakarta during working hours.

Furthermore, 269 new vehicles hit city streets every day, an increase from 138 units a day in 2003. And the very logical solution to Jakarta’s congestion, a proper mass rapid transportation system, had not been built until the mid 21st century, more than three decades after our middle class became one that could not live without cars.

A planned city supposedly invests in a proper public transportation system before growing into an uncontrollable sprawl. That is why the lack of political will has been cited as the cause of the absence of mass rapid transportation.

That is where cars come into play, into the love and hate relationship Jakartans have with cars. Loving their own cars and hating others’ cars for causing congestions, that is.

Like it or not, for most of Jakartans who can afford to set aside Rp8 million for the down payment of a brand new minivan and around Rp1 million for the monthly installment, owning a car would be on the top of their priority.

It does not matter whether they have own a house of their own, or at least rent one with a proper car port.

A man who parked his car at the private lot in Mampang said that he only used his car during weekends. The rest of the week, he would rather use his motorcycle. But, of course, he would rather have the car parked all weekdays long rather than not have it at all. The sight of cars lining up at night along the city’s alleys is also common. In this case, it is either there is no space at all for the cars inside the fence, or one car is simply not enough for Jakartans.

For the latter case, it is a vicious circle by definition.

It used to be feasible for Jakartans to have one car which would drive the father to the office, the children to school, and the mother to go shopping afterwards. But, that was only applicable some twenty years ago.

The father now blames the traffic congestions for the fact that he will not be able to arrive on meetings on time if he has to drop his children to school. So, he bought more cars which would eat up the already limited road space causing even worse congestions, forcing another father to buy more cars.

Which causes which?

And the problem with being dependent to private cars rolls into bigger ones about the environment.

Let the experts discuss about vehicle emissions, let’s stick to parking lot problems.

Taking brochures of homes offered by developers, we would still see a patch of green beside the car port of a unit. Come back to the actual site five years after it has been purchased, all you see a monotonous concrete-paved front yard.

Whatever happened to the patch of green?

Oops, we have to make way for more cars to park.

Although it seems trivial, a mere 10-square-meter front yard planted with greens can absorb rainwater. And there is a reason for a regulated building to land ratio. It means “let a certain patch of your land be porous enough to absorb rainwater, do not pave it.”

But, that of course does not apply in a city where one car is never enough.

According to a University of Indonesia study, if an area designed with a 20 percent building to land ratio is paved until the ratio increased to 60 percent, its capacity to absorb rainwater will drop by 50 percent.

Now, we know that car owners, us, also contribute to the flood that almost inundated the capital early on February.
Despite the creative spark of providing rentable parking lots like in Mampang and Kalibata, there is also an environmental impact if the same logic is applied. The former dump area in Kalibata has not been paved to assure that cars parked there would not be covered with mud during rainy days, but the 200-square meter lot in Mampang has.
Business wise, it makes sense.

“If I make it level and paved it, more cars can be parked there,” said owner of the parking lot.

Try applying environmental logic into it and it will not make any sense, unless one thinks that another great flood is sensible.

It seems that the issue about parking space is not about space per se. It is about social behavior, collective ego, and environmental awareness.




Jakarta, April 2007
Translated by Anissa S. Febrina. Edited by Rani Elsanti




ANISSA S. FEBRINA was born in Jakarta on February 27, 1980. She had her professional training at the University of Indonesia’s Architecture Department and worked only for three months as a junior architect in a small firm in Jakarta before impulsively quit the job that did not go in line with things she is most concern with: common people and the city. Currently, she is a City journalist for The Jakarta Post, spending her time roaming the city and writing extensively on various issues about Jakarta and its complex inhabitants.