Let’s check in on Jakarta, Indonesia. I have never been there, although I have set foot in Indonesia a couple times – Bali and a couple of the outlying islands around Singapore. I always maintain that Indonesia is the largest and most important country that gets little to no press coverage in the U.S.

• First, Jakarta is massive. It’s not just massive, it is the largest city on Earth according to the United Nations. It recently surged past Tokyo due to some methodological changes in how to decide what the actual boundaries of an urban area are. There are always arguments about that, but Jakarta is massive no matter how you slice it.
• It is at severe risk from sea level rise. It is located in a low-lying river delta, and while the ocean is rising the land is subsiding at an alarming rate. As of a few years ago, there were plans for massive public works to keep the ocean out, although some argue not enough is being done about groundwater extraction driving some of the subsidence. I haven’t checked in on these plans lately – maybe a topic for another post. These sorts of mega-projects tend to move slowly, although that may be my American perspective – when relatively functional developing and middle income countries want to get something done, they have a way of bringing in competent foreign contractors, low cost labor whether local or from nearby low-income countries, and taking a more lax attitude toward environmental and safety concerns, and whoever might need to be moved out of the way. There are some good and bad aspects to what I just said, of course, but the bottom line is middle income countries in Asia have been known to get things done.
• A decade or so ago, there was a consensus that Jakarta was not at all a nice place to live, especially when it came to getting around in gridlocked traffic and choking smog. I may have some sense of what this is like from time in Bangkok, but by all accounts Jakarta was much worse. Since I have been going to Bangkok over the last 20 years or so, they have made noticeable progress in public transportation and air pollution. Now it sounds like Jakarta has made significant improvements of its own in just the last few years. (Bangkok is also in a river delta and severely threatened by sea level rise, and while there is lots of discussion and planning it doesn’t seem like there is much happening on the ground. Another thing I will point out about both these cities is that the bulk of the population and economic activity of the country is highly concentrated in one mega-city, so a disaster in that city would be not just a disaster for the locals but for the entire country.)

In 2014, Jakarta was crowned the world’s most congested city by the Stop-Start Index and a year later was ranked far below other Asian cities on livability by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Ten years later, Jakarta has the world’s largest and one of the most used bus rapid transit (BRT) systems. The old, crowded diesel commuter trains, famous for allowing passengers to ride on the roofs, are now electrified, air conditioned, and run on regular schedules linking the suburbs to the city center. There are multiple subway and light rail lines crisscrossing the city. The transformation has been remarkable: in 2015, less than 20% of residents were within walking distance of transit. Now, nearly 90% of the city has access to BRT or trains.

You have to read down a ways to learn that they still have a long way to go on both access to transportation and air pollution. Because while they have been making these improvements, the population has continued to grow quickly, with increases in cars and sprawling land use to go along with it. If Jakarta is just Bangkok minus a decade or two, there is a particularly Asian brand of sprawl I have seen with my own eyes that will tend to outpace efforts to improve infrastructure in the city center.