A place to breathe in jam-packed Jakarta

Description

Jakarta’s high-rise settlements are the most crowded places in Southeast Asia. New community centres provide vital outdoor space for a hemmed-in population.

 

Older Jakartans would remember the 1963 Lilis Suryani song ‘Gang Kelinci’ (Rabbit Alley): people are multiplying in the city like rabbits, she sings.

Jakarta has always been crowded, but now hundreds of child-friendly community centres are giving people a healthy, outdoor place to go and providing vital support for their physical and mental well-being.

A megacity, Jakarta faces traffic congestion, housing, waste collection, water supply, and drainage and flooding problems. The metropolitan area, home to   30 million people, has large pockets of informal settlements and extremely high population density.