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Indonesia Urbanization
One of the most significant trends in Indonesian
society in the
1970s and 1980s was urbanization. Although cities in
Indonesia were
not a new phenomenon, from 1971 to 1990 the percentage of
the
population living in urban areas rose from 17 percent to
nearly 31
percent nationally. Surveys showed that the movement
toward urban
areas, particularly to West Java, and to southeastern
Sulawesi,
Kalimantan, and other islands, stemmed not from the innate
lure of
the cities but from the lack of employment in the
countryside.
Migrants seemed to view the pollution, crime, anonymity,
and
grinding poverty of the city as short-term discomforts
that would
eventually give way to a better life. For high-school and
college
graduates with no prospects for employment in the rural
areas, this
may in fact have been a correct assumption. But for those
migrants
without capital or qualifications, the main hope for
employment was
in the so-called "informal sector": street vending,
scavenging, and
short-term day labor. Many migrants also cultivated tiny
but
nutritionally important gardens.
Most urban growth was in cities of more than 1 million
in size.
Jakarta's population--11.5 million in 1990--was projected
to rise
to 16.9 million by 2000, which would make it the eleventh
largest
city in the world. Although the capital enjoyed a
disproportionate
amount of the nation's resources--with 30 percent of all
telephones
in the country, 25 percent of all cars, and 30 percent of
all
physicians--anthropologist P.D. Milone observed in the
mid-1960s
that "Jakarta has never been a true 'primate' city in
terms of
being the only center for economic, political,
administrative,
higher education, and technical functions" in the way
that, for
example, Bangkok has been for Thailand. Surabaya has
always been a
major import-export center and a major naval station, and
Bandung
has been a center for transportation, higher education,
and
industry. Nonetheless, in terms of population growth and
as a
symbol of the centralization of power in the nation,
Jakarta has
steadily grown in importance.
Data as of November 1992
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