Kalimantan

aka

Member
Joined
May 1, 2019
Messages
1
According to the Indonesian Future Capital City Proposal, we have five candidates from Kalimantan island:

1) Pontianak
2) Palangkaraya
3) Balikpapan
4) Banjarmasin
5) Kota Merdeka

To forum members, who have travelled Kalimantan island, which city/cities would you consider being the most liveable for expats and why?
 
None of them in their current state could support a large influx. Perhaps Balikpapan would have the most infrastructure from the old oil and mining days.

I imagine it will be a situation like Myanmar where the embassies etc dont move and the main business and finance center would remain in Jakarta.
 
Not an answer on your question but I am very sceptical as about any megalomaniac projects 'here' and don't think that most forum members will see this happening in their livespans.

The whole Brazilian project has never been a big success for Rio btw; it remained a huge city with all its associated problems. You could argue it was a good thing for the country but even that's debatable. You could say there will be less of an image of Javanese dominance but because of the sheer size of the population, that will never happen. And what about all these people going 'home' for the weekend? It will be amazingly wasteful and polluting.

I think Jokowi's original idea was a better one; continue the reclamation in the bay to save Jakarta, and move and concentrate all governmental functions there. Two birds with one stone.

Coming back to your question; IF this would materialize, that place would become so different and unrecognizable that the inquiry how it would be to live there now would seem to be futile.
 
Its been 25 year since I was in Balikpapan. The biggest attraction then was the carcass of a huge crocodile that has been terrorizing the locals fishing the main river in the area by eating them.
 
Seriously tho, I think moving the capital to Kalimantan is a good idea.

However, most coverage seem to miss an important, but unsaid, reason for moving the capital:

It takes it out of "walking distance" from Banten/West Java, making mass protest much harder to organize.
 
Balikpapan. The biggest attraction
And then Balikpapan scored very high on the Indonesian 'most desirable cities to live' list. You can imagine. I remember it being hot and humid (similar to JKT) and we had quite some rain, even in the supposedly dry season. Well, there were some (rather) nice beaches. (As long as there are not too many oil spills.)
 
My experience from the Yangon / Naypiydaw, and from speaking to government officials, who were the most affected was:
  • you can only do something like that under a dictatorship. In a democracy and demo-culture place like Indonesia is, it would just never get done. Not least the top govt officials / politicians would hardly be likely to agree to be uprooted from their Jakarta homes.
  • you can probably force government officials to move but at the beginning there would not be enough schools, hospitals etc. for the families, so you would have a lot of pissed off officials, who would be going home to meet their families once a month. 4 hours down the road to Yangon is one thing, but a flight back from Kalimantan?? they'd need a fleet of Airbus 380s.
  • you cannot force others to move, so embassies would stay in Jakarta, business would stay etc. In Myanmar, the traffic in Yangon has got MUCH worse since before the move (it would have done anyway, but still). The commercial centre won't be moving so it won't really solve anything traffic-wise.
 
What would be the effect of new capital in Kalimantan, considering that you have to displace hundreds of thousands of government employees and their families, most of them Javanese Muslims to a predominantly mixed or non-muslim areas in Kalimantan?
 
My experience from the Yangon / Naypiydaw, and from speaking to government officials, who were the most affected was:
  • you can only do something like that under a dictatorship. In a democracy and demo-culture place like Indonesia is, it would just never get done. Not least the top govt officials / politicians would hardly be likely to agree to be uprooted from their Jakarta homes.
  • you can probably force government officials to move but at the beginning there would not be enough schools, hospitals etc. for the families, so you would have a lot of pissed off officials, who would be going home to meet their families once a month. 4 hours down the road to Yangon is one thing, but a flight back from Kalimantan?? they'd need a fleet of Airbus 380s.
  • you cannot force others to move, so embassies would stay in Jakarta, business would stay etc. In Myanmar, the traffic in Yangon has got MUCH worse since before the move (it would have done anyway, but still). The commercial centre won't be moving so it won't really solve anything traffic-wise.
1AbujaNigeria1991Geographic location/Equal access
2BelmopanBelize1970Belize City was damaged by hurricane
3BrasiliaBrazil1960Overcrowding in Rio de Janeiro
4CanberraAustralia1913Compromise between Sydney and Melbourne
5GaboroneBotswana1964Botswana became independent
6IslamabadPakistan1967Less vulnerable to attacks than Karchi
7NaypyidawBurma 2005More centrally located
8New DelhiIndia1912Neutral territory
9NgerulmudPalau2006Avoid overconcentration of power
10PalikirFederated States of Micronesia1989Avoid overconcentration of power
11Washington, DCUnited States1800Avoid overconcentration of power

I notice a few counties in the list which are not dictatorships ,
 
I'd say the only one on the list that is vaguely comparable in terms of country size and political system (albeit shortly before they had a military dictatorship) in recent times is Brasilia. However the world of 2019 is very different with social media etc. so I still believe it would not be possible.
 
Maybe we shall see , Jakarta is a place I avoid for all the obvious reasons , im pretty sure a newly developed capitol would make the government more efficient .
 
The capital will be moved, right after the rupiah is redenominated, and the Sunda Strait bridge completed.

But not before alcohol ban.

I think the new international airport in (northern) Bali would fit somewhere in between as well?

Anyway, it seems to me it's more or less the central government giving up. Giving up on Jakarta, giving up on solving flooding and giving up on subsiding.

It's also a bit of a message towards the current governor who seems to think he's smarter than all these Dutch engineers and has undone all existing plans after phase 1. So now in five years time, the central administration can wash their hands in innocence and say: "You see? We warned you. Don't look at us, we had a master plan. Now we want to move..."
 
I think bali is way too unstable , earthquakes volcanos etc .
A lot of investors bought cheap land in north bali hoping on a quick return ,now they are "crying in their beer " ,its a dead area and too far away from the "bright lights" of the south .
If they do "at some point " build a new airport , it will be a white elephant like the new airport in lombok imho .
 

Users who viewed this discussion (Total:0)

Follow Us

Latest Expat Indo Articles

Latest Tweets by Expat Indo

Latest Activity

New posts Latest threads

Online Now

No members online now.

Newest Members

Forum Statistics

Threads
5,966
Messages
97,420
Members
3,036
Latest member
stats
Back
Top Bottom