Meikarta: Is it as Beautiful as The Grand Design?

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Now, please open the youtube and type: Meikarta. Choose the video shows you galleries of Meikarta. Watch, then, go back to this page.

 What do you think about Meikarta? Is it awesome? Is it amazing? Or does it worry you? Or even no tends at all?
To be honest, my first impression when i watched the ads was very amazed how brave the developer built the new city with full of high-tech facilities and best services atmosphere to live.
But, then, is that so?

 Meikarta is the biggest mega project for this 67 years held by Lippo Group, one of the big company in Indonesia owned by Mochtar Riady. In the beginning, this group was known with its Lippo Bank (But now it turned as ‘CIMB Niaga’). Lippo then chose the consent, and develop itself into property matters. The properties had spread in Indonesia, Tiongkok, etc.



 James Tjahaja Riady, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Lippo Group, explained that Meikarta will built on the 500 acres ground as wide. Located in the corridor of Jakarta and Bandung, with the (very big) amount of investment: Rp278 Trilliuns! Let’s look this case with the geography perspective. We gone through the location.

 Meikarta as we see in the picture has the very strategic location: Built beside Cikampek Toll, Near the Halim Perdana Kusuma Airport, Majalengka (Kertajati) International Airport, Patimban Deep Seaport, and MRT/LRT/Express Train. It nears the centers of the agglomeration people! which means that it nears the happening of the capital flow. Does it? Yes!
Regional economy problem worries will happen: If Meikarta success in pulling at least almost half of Jakarta’s human resources, the center of capital flow (Jakarta) would move into Meikarta’s hand. Meikarta is a foreign-owned company, so, those capital flow will move to Meikarta’s owner, which is foreigner. If it was foreigner, Indonesia would not get any benefits at all or if it get, it would be sooo the small percent of!
Lippo then offers others attracting facilities like: there will be 250000 houses in the first phase of development (1 million households capacity), 12–25 years apartment credit (started from 8.2% of interests), 200 skyscrapers (35–46 floors), 7 malls (1.5 Million square meters wide), International financial and hospital centers, 5 5 stars-hotels, National library, 3 Top Universities, Opera and art center, 10 International elementary and national plus school, 50 junior/senior high schools (International/National), Industrial research center, International exhibition center, and Indonesia Silicon Valley! (Haven’t heard Silicon Valley yet? just ask google!).
Imagine, those all will be found in Meikarta, the New City claimed as the most completed infrastructure in South-east Asia. This will be likely that by August, 17th 2017 Meikarta has 99300 units booked!
But, have you know the fact behind it awesome offers?
Alamsyah based on the information from Kementerian Agraria dan Tata Ruang(Eng: Agriculture and Spatial Planning) to Ombudsman, Meikarta’s Izin Peruntukan Penggunaan Tanah (IPPT) (Eng: Land use permit) only registered 84.6 acres of 164 acres proposed by Meikarta. In addition, Meikarta also has not completed other permits such as Izin Mendirikan Bangunan (IMB) (Eng: Building Permit) and AMDAL (Environment Effects Analysis).

 Could you imagine, the biggest mega project which only have 84.6 of 164 acres permission has brave enough to launch their property and success pulling 99300 booked units? One of the customer once in an interview even said that she was not worried the permission matters at all. She knows that Lippo haven’t finished it yet but she was so optimistic that the government will not reject this very big mega project, even though Deddy Mizwar, West Java Vice Governor had told Lippo for many times, asked them paused the project until the permission get done. But Lippo keep heading forward their mega project.
The phenomenon of new artificial city built, actually ever happened in these recent years. BSD (Bumi Serpong Damai), Monaco Bay, Maja, stopped in uncontrolled condition. In the other countries, this phenomenon also happened: Arab Saudi (The world Island, Kingdom City, Dubai Meydan), Malaysia (Putra Jaya) but it was successfully built.
Then, we will asked to ourselves: If they could make it, why could not (or it haven’t reach the time yet) Indonesia?




Marco Kusumawijaya, City Observer, in live streaming discussion held by Nekropolis told that he didn’t agree in building a new city. He prefers to grow, develop the recent cities better. If there will be a new city, it would take civil’s land. Even though it was an empty land. Because an empty land is null, it wasn’t really ‘empty’. It has a function made inhabited.
Talking about urban development, Marco shared his principles: 1) It is better to build a building with 3,4,5,6 floors than 30 or more than 30 floors. It related into Indonesia’s local wisdom and to get chance of getting space, 2) An empty land is not the real empty land. It has functions and purposes. Seizure of an empty land will trigger into 2 problems: functional and administrative boundaries. Marco then also said, If Meikarta successfully built, there would be 4 big threats: environmental aspects, large increase in land prices, price speculation, and overall productivity.
One of Meikarta’s vision is providing apartment rent start from Rp127.5 Millions each. Minimizing land use, solution offered by Marco was building houses in vertical concept. This is so, because vertical concept of housing could make infrastructure development become easier. This also could minimizing big problems in Indonesia: housing and public transportation. Living in vertical house will tends to use public transportation as the main thing to go and this will lesser the use of private transportation. It will lesser the pollution and traffic jam too.

 Behind those, we also have to look at the social sight. Vertical houses based on my lecture’s research: easy bringing up the conflict. Either among neighbor or conflict in their own family itself. This shows that building and developing the city cannot be done by urban and regional planning expertise only, but also from the other major like sociology, architect, physical engineering, civil engineering, geography, etc.
Closing statement by Marco was giving the emphasis on the important of multidisciplinary teamwork in developing the city. In the great of teamwork, collaboration, the prosperous city expected will come true.

 And Meikarta, for me myself, haven’t implemented this yet. They still need an expertise from law major (or other regional consent-major) to give them education about how dangerous is building the mega project with uncleared permissions. It will not only give the problems in law, but also in environmental matters because of the uncleared AMDAL. Meikarta brings a very good innovation, it was futuristic. But unfortunately, they did not understand the basic issues.
  • Written by Ulfah Choirunnisa on September 10, 2017 after Nekropolis discussion on September 8, 2017. www.medium.com/@ucgeolife

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