Slums, Urbanization and The Poor
I lived in Jakarta for a few years. I have spent enough time to experience the city and to understand how the city displays social disparity too obviously. The slums are the best representation of the urban poor of Jakarta. In search for better live, people from rural areas of Indonesia are migrating to the capital: a globally happening phenomenon called urbanization. Unable to afford high housing price, these people occupy the "residue" area of the city: along the riverbanks, on both sides of the railways and under the freeway. You can call them slums, ghettos, sprawl, etc. Image below shows the intensity of slum areas in different parts of Jakarta. The darkest blue represents areas where most slums have been built.
Number of slum housing per Kelurahan (village) in Jakarta (Ministry of Public Works 2012)
The emergence of slums is a result of inability of the state to provide affordable formal housing for its people. It is also related to the disparity of development between rural and urban areas. Significantly lower living standard and lower income in rural areas compared to the urban area has triggered the urbanization. In Jakarta, this rapidly growing number of migrants can get better income compared to where they came from. However, the housing and house rent price is simply unreachable, forcing the people to settle illegally in parts of the city.
A typical slum area in Jakarta (servantasia.org)
The city, interestingly, is dependent and reliant on its poor citizen. These slum communities are the front-line squads to run the economy of the city and an important part of the urban fabric. For example, Pemulung (waste pickers), which is one of the major inhabitants of the slum area, contribute to the city waste management, as I covered in my previous post.
Children play on a styrofoam raft in a polluted river near a slum area in Jakarta (Enny Nuraheni/Reuters)
Unfortunately, due to the lack of basic services and infrastructure, the slums are suffering from a lot of different problems. Their exposure to dangerous toxic and chemicals has caused health problems. From social perspective, children of the slums are not getting enough education and sometimes are being used as commodity to make money (as street beggars, street musicians or street vendors). It is the responsibility of the state to provide better living conditions for these people. The problems have been a long and complex ones. Fixing these problems is very difficult, but certainly not impossible. Total reformation of bureaucracy, complete eradication of corruption, just regulations and implementations are the first key steps to be taken.
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