Planning the Megacity: Jakarta in the Twentieth Century

Planning the Megacity examines the dramatic transformation of Jakarta over the past century. In 1900, the colonial capital of the Netherland Indies, then known as Batavia, was a compact city of approximately 150,000 inhabitants. During the next hundred years, but especially after 1950, it was transformed into the sprawling ‘megacity’ of more than 9 million in an urbanized region that boasted nearly 18 million by 2000.

How this metamorphosis took place and what it meant for the life of Jakar...