Indonesia's president has announced plans to move the country’s capital from overcrowded, sinking and polluted Jakarta to a sparsely populated area on Borneo island.
Indonesia President Joko Widodo gestures as he speaks during a press conference at the palace in Jakarta, Indonesia, Monday, Aug. 26, 2019. Indonesia's president has announced to relocate the country's capital from overcrowded, sinking and polluted Jakarta to East Kalimantan province.
The new capital city, which has not yet been named, will be in the middle of the vast archipelago nation and already has relatively complete infrastructure because it is near the cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda, Widodo said. Currently 54% of the country’s nearly 270 million people live on Java, the country’s most densely populated area.
Jakarta is an archetypical Asian mega-city with 10 million people, or 30 million including those in its greater metropolitan area. It is prone to earthquakes and flooding and is rapidly sinking due to uncontrolled extraction of ground water. The ground water is highly contaminated as are its rivers. Congestion is estimated to cost the economy $6.5 billion a year.
He said the studies determined that the best site is between two districts, North Penajam Paser and Kutai Kertanegara, an area that has minimal risk of disasters such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires, volcanic eruptions or landslides in the seismically active nation.
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