Urbanization in the World’s Fourth Most Populous Country

Jakarta is the capital city of the world’s fourth most populous country. Jakarta is also become the largest metropolitan city in Southeast Asia. It has a huge rate of population growth and some urban problems. One of the urban problem in Jakarta is the trend of urbanization. Urbanization has become a phenomenon in Indonesia especially Jakarta. The rate of urbanization growth in Indonesia has increased significantly which will lead the country to face the national problems and obstruct the country’s development. This phenomenon usually occurs right after people celebrating Idul Fitri in their hometown. The influx of urbanization has always become uncontrollable after Idul Fitri. According to UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the number of population in Jakarta has reached aproximately 17.3 million after Idul Fitri in 2009(Abanes, 2009). The most important thing of this phenomenon is not about the huge number of population caused by the urbanization in Jakarta, but it is about questioning why it happens continuously time after time. Although there are local law regulations, still it is hard to prevent and forbid the migrants to move to big city. They notice that every citizen has the right to live everywhere of the country.

What is the definition of urbanization? Urbanization is the movement of people from rural areas into the city. Their main objective basically is to search a better life by living in the big city. They have a perception by living in a big city will give them a better life instead of living in their origin area. There are two factors that tempting people from the rural area to move to the megapolitan city. The first factor is ‘pull factor’, and the second factor is ‘push factor’. The pull factor is the factor that comes from the city where the migrants are moving to. While the push factor comes from the rural areas where the migrants live before they move to the big city. The pull factors are the more complete and modern facilities available, bigger opportunity to continue the education, and the more kind of job varieties. The push factors are the limited seats of job opportunities, poverty in the rural areas, limited facilities of transportation, education, health, economy and agriculture area for people in rural areas especially in Java Island.

Urbanization does not completely give bad influence to the urban area. However, there are several problems occured by this phenomenon. The tremendous rate of urbanization in Jakarta could be seen by the overpopulation in this city. Jakarta is being lived by 4.14 percent of the total population in Indonesia while the width of the city is only 0.3 percent of the width of the country. The number of population which has been over the capacity of the urban area is increasing the number of urban-poor and decreasing the job opportunities as well as the space of land for living. The Jakarta administration said that urbanization enlarge slum areas and squatter communities in Jakarta (Nasir, S., 2008). The difficulty level of managing the citizens in the urban area increased as the population keep growing by the urbanization. Urbanization in Jakarta is also affecting the environment. Water, land, air and sound are being polluted. The air in Jakarta is not fresh anymore. It is polluted by the millions vehicle all over Jakarta everyday especially in the daytime. Every single person rides his or her own vehicle to go to school, university or workplace. The gas emission producted by the vehicle has caused the pollution. The water in Jakarta is also being polluted by people who throw the household rubish into the river. They throw the rubish into the river, because they do not have more land space to hold their rubish before it is recycled or destroyed.

Those problems that have been mentioned above are caused by some reasons. Basically, the urbanization are caused by the imbalance development inter-areas in Indonesia and the poverty condition which force the people who live in villages to move. Jakarta is the city with the most complete and modern facilites for all aspect of life such as transportation, hygienal maintenance as well as moderately satisfactory standards of living. People in the rural areas or villages are tempted to move to the city with hope to get an easier life by having those facilities offered in Jakarta. Many unskilled people migrate to this city. They think by moving to the big city they will be facilitated and earned money easily. This perception is completely wrong. By living in a metropolitan city like Jakarta, they need a lot of skills and creativities to survive; otherwise, they would be urban-poor who live on the street . The imbalance development has affected the industry sector. The industrial activities are being concentrated in Jakarta as the cities with the best infrastucture. The investors tend to invest their money in the area with complete infrastructure and facilities. If they do so they can push the production cost such as the cost for distributing goods and services down to the very minimum level. On the contrary, people tend to live in the city where the industry are being centralized because they will be fulfilling their needs and getting a job easily. The imbalance economic development caused the income discrepancy between urban area and village. Furthermore, the economical growth in Jakarta does not influence its peripheral areas significantly which caused daily movement in Jakarta. As Quoted from the article on internet,
“The periphery of Jakarta is heavily dependent on the central city. Botadetabek is a ‘bedroom subburb’ for the daily commuters of Jakartais the centre of government and corporate offices, commercial and entertainment enterprise. The economy of Jakarta dominates its peripheral areas. In the daytime total population in Jakarta nearly doubled its population in the nighttime. The number of daily movement in Jakarta is estimated at six to seven millions.” (Urbanization and Suburbanization in Jakarta, 2007).

This phenomenon is routine for developing country such as Indonesia. It gives bad effects more than the good effects for the city and the country. The rate of urbanization influx occur bad effects for the urban-area like Jakarta. One of them is the increasing of slum areas. The limited land for living that available in Jakarta will make the urban-poor build temporary house in some areas like riverbank. As the width of land for living is going down, people who live in the slum areas are throwing their household rubish int the river. When the rainy season comes, it will occur flood everywhere in the city. The unskilled migrants come to Jakarta and fail to get job in this city, because they do not have sufficient skills and abilities to compete with million people in this city. The number of job opportunities in Jakarta are unsufficient for all the population in the city. As the result, they who do not have income will not survive, and probably they will do the crime to fulfill their basic needs to continue their life. When people cannot fulfill their basic needs to get food, clothes, and good place to live, they will do anything to get what they need to keep staying alive. Crime is finally become the last resort for them to fulfill their needs. They do not feel like ashamed to steal, kill, and robe in order to get what they need. The number of vehicles around Jakarta which are keep increasing lead this city to face the traffic jam and air pollution. According to World Health Organization (WHO), Jakarta is the world’s third most polluted city after Bangkok and Mexico City (Okkie, 2009). People who live in Jakarta will be contaminated with the pollution producted by vehicle emissions and burning waste. if this happens continuously, it may be dangerous for their health. To be contaminated by the pollutant might bring them to suffer from cancer. As the number of vehicles are keep growing, Jakarta has worsened the traffic jam problem. It can be seen almost everywhere in Jakarta especially in the busy time. However, there are three solutions to prevent and push down the rate of urbananization influx.
First of all, the government should keep the balance development between urban-areas and rural areas in order to avoid the discrepancy. The government has to build the same facilities in rural areas as complete as in urban-areas. By buliding the facilities such as public transportation and the infrastructure in the rural areas, the investor might think to open a job field in that area. However, the industrial activities must be built as well in that area, and the administration corporation should not be concentrated only in urban-areas. The government also need to open job field by giving some capital money to people in that area for starting their own small business. When there are a lot of job opportunities available, people will think to stay in their current area. Both solutions will be squashing the myth of by living in a metropolitan city, people will get a better life.

In addition to keep the balance development between urban areas and rural areas, the government should increase the living quality of people in rural areas or villages. The government might provide qualified education and health facilities. Having education facilities will make people easier to get a good education from their origin area, because the lack of education facility is one of ‘push factor’ that tempt people to migrate to the metropolitan city. The government need to provide a free education for poor people. Another way to increase the living quality for people in villages is to open a training centre. By openning some training centre, unskilled and uneducated people can gain their skills and abilities. They can improve the skills that they have like sewing, computer skill, foreign languages, planting, and so on. Afterwards, the skills gained by people in that area will be used to produce a product that can be marketed to the big cities.

Last, the government can regulate a law that prohibiting people to migrate from villages to big cities. Mostly the urbanization rate increases right after people go back to their hometown for celebrating Idul Fitri. Afterward, they will be coming back to the city all together with their family member to live in the big city permantently. The government suppose to implement an operation that can be ‘filtering’ non-indigenous people to live in Jakarta. All of the new comers have to be interogating several questions once they arrive in the urban city. They who have not complete all of the requirement such as need to be skilld enough, have a place to live, get a job, and all the citizens administration will be asked to go back to their origin area. Actually, this kind of solution has been implemented by Jakarta’s government. The government was regulating a policy which the indigenous people in Jakarta must be registered. The government has also done an inspection called ‘yustisi operation’. Yustisi operation is kind of inspection which always being done by the government normaly three or more days after the day of Idul Fitri every year. The objective of the operation is to pushing down the rate of urbanization.

To sum up, urbanization in the mertopolitan city like Jakarta has made the city become overcrowded. As a result, the city cannot handle with the excessive density of the population. Several problems occurs due to the excessive density od the population. Some of the problems are the lack of job opportunities, the decreasing of land for living , and so on. Those problems occur because of the imbalance development in economic and social sector between one big city and other rural areas which lead poor people from villages to migrate to the urban areas with the hope of getting a better life. Urbanization is not something that can be avoid of. However, the rate of urbanization influx can be pushed down by some solutions. First, the government have to avoid the economy discrepancy by developing the facility and infrastructure in rural areas. Another solution is to increase the living quality for poor people in the villages. Moreover, the government might regulate a law or an operation which will decrease the number of migrants. This issue need to be responded seriously; otherwise, the effects of the trend of urbanization will be bothering the development of the country. Those solutions may come up, but there is still a big question, has the government been responding this issue very well?