The city that will soon rise out of the jungle is announced many kilometers in advance. It takes two hours by car from the nearest airport through the middle of nowhere on the island of Borneo, through palm oil plantations, over hills, past small villages on a narrow road. Until at some point the visibility becomes hazy and gray construction dust settles on the leaves of the plants.
Potholes in the road surface due to the many concrete mixers and trucks. They transport iron rods, paving stones and gravel to the construction site. The first cranes can be seen, pits made of red earth, and more and more men in safety shoes and with construction helmets on their heads.
They are building the future capital of Indonesia. Welcome to Nusantara.
Build a new capital, start all over again, lay the foundation stone, freely choose the location. This is what Indonesia has dreamed of since its independence in 1945. Of a city that is ideally located in the center of the country and emphasizes the unity of society. Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, the largest Muslim, with 17,000 islands, hundreds of languages and ethnic groups, and three time zones. But so far economic and political power has been concentrated on the island of Java.
The current capital Jakarta is also located there, with 30 million inhabitants living in the area around it - a city that attracts everyone's attention and yet many consider it to be no longer presentable. Jakarta has been struggling with extreme air pollution, traffic jams and flooding for years. Every year the ground there sinks by up to 20 centimeters because groundwater is pumped out and sea levels rise. A declining capital.
But does that mean Indonesia needs a completely new one?
The man who tackled the dream of the new city and declared it a project is called Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, the current President of Indonesia. He was once mayor of Jakarta himself. In 2019 he announced: Construction is starting. We are moving. To Nusantara, which means something like “archipelago”.
He promised that the new capital would be in Borneo, 1,300 kilometers away from Jakarta. Two million people are expected to live there on 560 square kilometers, an area one and a half times the size of Munich.
Nusantara will be a green city, surrounded by rainforest, powered by renewable energy. A city Indonesians could be proud of. Without traffic jams, but with plenty of public transport where you can walk or cycle. A high-tech city, with intelligent sewage systems and perhaps one day flying taxis, where digital nomads want to settle.
With a presidential palace towering high above everything that looks like a Garuda eagle, the heraldic animal of Indonesia. “We want to build a new Indonesia,” Jokowi said at the time. »Indonesia is more than Jakarta.«
A utopian city.
A city like a monument to an outgoing president.
The Nusantara project is difficult to separate from Joko Widodo's final days in office. He became known as the “infrastructure president,” initiated the construction of many roads, port and railway projects, and is extremely popular among the population. And spent his entire second term pushing forward the construction of the capital. The construction was even enshrined in law. Although the pandemic severely disrupted the schedule, it is now almost impossible to keep to it. Furthermore, according to a recent survey, more than half of Indonesians are against the construction. But Widodo is sticking to his goal.
The first ministries are scheduled to move and the government palace to be inaugurated in 2024 - the same year in which Widodo will step down as president. Next Wednesday there will be elections in Indonesia, and more than 200 million citizens can cast their votes. After two terms in office, Widodo is not allowed to run again. Does the president want to quickly create a monument for himself? Is the money for the new metropolis really well spent in a country where a tenth of the people still live in poverty?
The money
Shift change is at seven in the morning. Construction workers then board shuttle buses back to the container village and greet their colleagues who are now taking over. The fog over the construction site is clearing. The construction spotlights that the men used to work through the night are turned off. The coolness will soon give way to the heat, as it does every day. In the province of East Kalimantan, close to the equator, where Nusantara will one day be located, there is a tropical, humid climate. It's hotter here than over in Jakarta.
A few tourists gather at Point Zero, the founding stone of Nusantara. Rostati also came with his family. She comes from the area and says: »I'm pretty proud that the new city is being built here. But it’s impossible to do it in five years.”
A man with a wide gait and a green shirt runs frantically past the tourists: Agung Wicaksono. Deputy for Funding and Investment. The man who is supposed to collect the money for the city.
Wicaksono got the call from the government about a year ago, “from the very top,” as he says. That he is needed, urgently needed. He says: "I'm just a salesman." But you could also say: He's the most important man in town. Because the account has to be full before the excavators come.
On this morning in early February, Wicaksono has in tow an investor from the USA who wears mirrored sunglasses and has his company in New York.
The cost of Nusantara is estimated at $38 billion. Indonesia pays 20 percent of this from its own coffers - for basic infrastructure, government buildings and the apartment blocks that government officials are soon to move into. Wicaksono calls them “the pioneers.” Everything that is currently being built on site is covered by the state treasury.
But the vast majority – 80 percent – should be privately financed. Everything that makes a city a city - apartments, restaurants, malls, cinemas, theaters, bars, hotels, business centers, office districts. And that's where it gets stuck. The investors don't want to come.
Wicaksono is trying to convince CEOs of major Indonesian and foreign companies.
But Japanese technology conglomerate Softbank has pulled out. Countries that are interested, such as Saudi Arabia or Singapore, have not yet signed any contracts. A government representative from the United Arab Emirates was there recently.
Wicaksono wants the city to be one that is loved by everyone. But this requires people who can bring the plans to life.
Uncertainty drives investors away. The upcoming elections are such an uncertainty. If Jokowi is soon gone, something like the city's founding father, will his successor even pursue the plans?
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How important the Nusantara project is to Joko Widodo is shown by the deal he made with a former political rival: Prabowo Subianto, 72, who lost two presidential elections to Jokowi. Now he has a good chance of becoming Indonesia's next president. Because Jokowi has appointed his eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming, as his running mate.
For many, this is a scandal, and not just because incumbent presidents are normally not allowed to interfere in the election campaign. But also because Prabowo, a former military general, is accused of serious human rights violations during the Suharto regime, including in Timor-Leste and during anti-government riots in May 1998. For critics, Prabowo is a criminal who must be held accountable.
For Joko Widodo, he is the man who guaranteed to complete his legacy.
The unwanted ones
Syamsiah, 49, wears a pink headscarf and says: “If they really drive us out of here, then they will have to bury me here. I will not go. This is my country.”
She is sitting in the backyard of her house in the village of Sepaku, not far from the Nusantara construction site. 80 families have lived here for generations. Syamsiah owns a wooden house and some land with her husband and six children. They used to grow rice there, but today the area is often flooded. The government is building a dam to ensure the fresh water supply to the new capital. »Everything breaks for us.«
Some neighbors have already left their apartments and moved far away. Property prices nearby have already gone up because of Nusantara. There were politicians there who wanted to convince residents to move, says Syamsiah. There are compensation payments for those who leave. For those who remain, unclear statements: Nobody says Sepaku will be flooded. Some say the village is being converted into a tourist resort. “If we leave, we’ll start from scratch,” she says.
Syamsiah and the others belong to the local Balik People ethnic group. Your ancestors are buried here and many places have spiritual significance. Most do not have land titles. Their lives are based on the assumption that they can stay where they have been for a long time. In the plans for the glossy new capital project, it seems that ordinary people have been forgotten. "We get nothing, while the new residents of Nusantara get everything." The question is whether a city can unite if it disregards the local culture and people.
The plan
Indonesia is not the first country to create a new capital. The Australian Parliament moved to Canberra in 1927. Brasília replaced Rio as the capital in 1960. In 1998, Kazakhstan founded Astana. Naypyidaw in Myanmar is a planned city, Abuja in Nigeria. In Egypt, President Sisi has been building a New Cairo for ten years.
The problem with almost all of these cities: too expensive, desolate, high national debt, nobody wants to move there. It often took decades before the cities were halfway accepted. Some still aren't today. Why should things be different in Nusantara?
Sibarani Sofian is the architect of Nusantara. In his office in Jakarta, designs of houses, promenades, bridges and streets hang on drawing paper. For example from "People's Boulevard", next to it it is noted: "should be intimate and oriented towards the people". Sibaran says he finds it difficult to think of anything other than the new city. He looks closely at what went wrong in the other planned cities.
Sibarani won the government tender in 2019. Almost 700 architects registered for the competition. Sibarani had six to eight weeks to draw the plans. A lot was already clear: the location of the government buildings. Her size. The architect has nothing to do with some ideas. For example, with the palace in the shape of an eagle. If he had had his way, a much more modest design would be implemented there today.
The city's topography is complicated, says Sibarani. There are lots of hills there, a lot of inclines, a lot of declines, and the clay soil often has to be removed first and a new subsoil created so that the foundations of buildings are not washed away during the rainy season.
The challenge is to plan a city today that people will like in two, three or four decades, says Sibarani. What ideas do you have about a good life? How will they organize their everyday life? Will they still live as families, or how much space do they need?
Nusantara is scheduled to be fully completed by 2045. "The baby boomers are making the decision today, but those who will live in the city are Gen Z or much younger." That's why Sibarani employs a lot of people under 30 in his office. Take them, for example important: public transport. 80 percent of transport should work by buses and trains. That is more than in Tokyo, more than in Singapore.
But then there is the matter of nature. Borneo, where Nusantara is being built and which partly belongs to Malaysia and partly to Indonesia, is home to one of the largest rainforests in the world. Orangutans, leopards, elephants and proboscis monkeys live there.
The island is already known for the environmental destruction that has been taking place there for decades. Conservationists estimate that almost half of the original jungle has been cleared. There are huge coal mines near the construction site; 60 percent of Indonesia's coal exports come from Borneo. Many critics fear that the new city will only further destroy nature because massive amounts of forest will be cut down to make concrete.
“If we stick to the plans,” says architect Sibarani, “then this criticism is wrong.” In fact, the forest around the city is no longer a rainforest, but rather a so-called industrial forest. Fast-growing eucalyptus is planted for paper production. Nusantara's plans call for these monocultures to disappear and natural jungle to grow in their place again. A city that ensures more nature. That would be a good thing. But Sibarani knows how quickly plans change.
The future
It's easy to think the idea of a new capital is stupid. The billions could be spent on new schools. You could build a subway in Jakarta. You could support projects for young women in the villages of the Balik People or declare a new nature reserve.
But can’t a country sometimes dream big?
And where are the people who say that cities need to become more climate-friendly and give people more space and green spaces? Nusantara wants to be such a city. She could be considered a role model in 30 years.
Around the construction site you meet people who are already earning more money as kiosk owners or workers than before. They have the feeling that the government is finally thinking about them. There are forest researchers in Borneo who are actually convinced by the reforestation plans around Nusantara.
But even architect Sibarani, the city's designer, is unsure whether he really wants to move his office to Nusantara. He doesn't know whether the heart of Indonesia will ever lie anywhere other than Jakarta. It is possible that Nusantara will ultimately become nothing more than "a department of government buildings in the jungle." If the investors don't come soon. If construction work doesn't pick up speed soon.
President Widodo's critics fear that Indonesia is overextending itself financially with the mega project. They also doubt that international embassies will move to the neighboring island as long as Nusantara doesn't feel like a real capital but more like a theme park.
In any case, the signposts are already in the center of the construction site, the Teras Cakrawala, the central promenade through the future government district. Turn left to Plaza Barat and the grassy hill. To the right to the government palace. The palace, which is supposed to look like an eagle, is still missing its wings. It is questionable whether they will be finished by August 17th. Then it's Indonesian Independence Day. And the initiation of Nusantara.
What is quite certain is that the palace will be finished enough for Joko Widodo to move in by then. His term ends in the fall. For a few more weeks he will be able to manage the country's fortunes from an office in Nusantara.
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