the Fortresses of Inequality
In North Jakarta, there is a neighborhood named Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) that neither show up on tour guides or in any Jakarta tourists' itineraries. It lies beyond a highway and a mangrove forest that separate it from the main commercial areas of old town Jakarta. Sure, the traffic on the main streets of PIK still remain, as is the case for most of the metropolis, but the hectic mass of people and shops that is the old North Jakarta is replaced with straight neighborhood roads, devoid of street-side shops and even pavement for pedestrians, but full of delicately manicured bushes and flowers.
Next to the main road, between a little man-made mangrove forest and a fenced urban golf club, is a not-so-conspicuous gated community that does not look like much from the outside. It has a bit of construction going on on one side, likely for a new residential building, and the main entrance is but a flimsy overhead gate with a couple of green-khaki-wearing security guards lounging around. Their Vietcong-esque physical presence does not add any more attractiveness to the community at that point, but satisfying a sense of curiosity does require a peek into the inside.
For a couple of Chinese guys, walking straight past the entrance gate did not even solicit a glance from the guards, who simply carried on with their chat. The perplexity of the "security measure's" looseness instantly dissipates after a couple of minutes walk into the neighborhood. To the casual visitors' line of sight emerged residences that are more fittingly labelled as "mini-castles" rather than the average houses. The mini-castles often had red lanterns hanging in front of the main doors, denoting that that the Chinese visitors would belong here simply based on ethnicity.
But aside from the red lanterns, and the fact that cars running down the streets of the community are almost exclusively driven by the Chinese, the community itself does not visually evoke any distinctive Chinese-ness. Instead, the architectural designs of the mini-castles spared no efforts to convey a feel that is completely alien to the Chinese or Indonesian cultures. Some houses have the clean post-modern design, with large glass panes for multistory windows, while others put effort into wall decorations with distinct patterns and gardens with not-so-tropical bonsai.
Yet, all such efforts pal in comparison to the European-style houses, with their long frontal stairs leading up to heavy-looking double door entrances. The doors are often preceded by gold-laced black metal gates of European castle fame, and flanked by white Greek columns that conveniently give the houses a sense of pseudo-classical symmetry. It goes without saying how out-of-place these massive compounds look in metropolitan Jakarta, in which the vast majority of residential buildings are simple two-story concrete houses with little extra decorations.
Which brings up the point of why the undoubtedly wealthy residents of PIK expend so much effort to custom-design and build to great expense these massive family houses that resemble nothing that comes from their original or adopted cultures. The motivation of standing out within a secluded place is both a matter of competition and a matter of security, a desire to show off what you have to make sure others understood that the amount of wealth is very real, but at the same time professing that the wealth is to be spent in lavish ways for the enjoyment of a small group of people.
However, the massive display of wealth can simultaneously be interpreted as a lack of confidence in these residents' sense of self-identity. There is nothing that communicates one's desire to be somewhere else and someone else than living within a European castle of some sort. It is only unfortunate that they were born Indonesian, cannot easily move abroad, and make their enormous wealth in this massive Indonesian market. Given the opportunity to make just as much money legally and live just as regally in Europe, there is no doubt that all of them will take up the opportunity.
Of course, PIK is by no means the only one in Jakarta, in Indonesia, or Southeast Asia in general. The gated communities across the region help retain wealth in small pockets, both in terms of geography and social status. And as a result, when a city generates wealth, it also becomes a visual collage of opulent development and lack thereof, giving the desperate entirely false hopes that one day, maybe one day, they will reach a point that they can live, rather than just pass by or work in, one of these fortresses of wealth in surreal neighborhood.
Next to the main road, between a little man-made mangrove forest and a fenced urban golf club, is a not-so-conspicuous gated community that does not look like much from the outside. It has a bit of construction going on on one side, likely for a new residential building, and the main entrance is but a flimsy overhead gate with a couple of green-khaki-wearing security guards lounging around. Their Vietcong-esque physical presence does not add any more attractiveness to the community at that point, but satisfying a sense of curiosity does require a peek into the inside.
For a couple of Chinese guys, walking straight past the entrance gate did not even solicit a glance from the guards, who simply carried on with their chat. The perplexity of the "security measure's" looseness instantly dissipates after a couple of minutes walk into the neighborhood. To the casual visitors' line of sight emerged residences that are more fittingly labelled as "mini-castles" rather than the average houses. The mini-castles often had red lanterns hanging in front of the main doors, denoting that that the Chinese visitors would belong here simply based on ethnicity.
But aside from the red lanterns, and the fact that cars running down the streets of the community are almost exclusively driven by the Chinese, the community itself does not visually evoke any distinctive Chinese-ness. Instead, the architectural designs of the mini-castles spared no efforts to convey a feel that is completely alien to the Chinese or Indonesian cultures. Some houses have the clean post-modern design, with large glass panes for multistory windows, while others put effort into wall decorations with distinct patterns and gardens with not-so-tropical bonsai.
Yet, all such efforts pal in comparison to the European-style houses, with their long frontal stairs leading up to heavy-looking double door entrances. The doors are often preceded by gold-laced black metal gates of European castle fame, and flanked by white Greek columns that conveniently give the houses a sense of pseudo-classical symmetry. It goes without saying how out-of-place these massive compounds look in metropolitan Jakarta, in which the vast majority of residential buildings are simple two-story concrete houses with little extra decorations.
Which brings up the point of why the undoubtedly wealthy residents of PIK expend so much effort to custom-design and build to great expense these massive family houses that resemble nothing that comes from their original or adopted cultures. The motivation of standing out within a secluded place is both a matter of competition and a matter of security, a desire to show off what you have to make sure others understood that the amount of wealth is very real, but at the same time professing that the wealth is to be spent in lavish ways for the enjoyment of a small group of people.
However, the massive display of wealth can simultaneously be interpreted as a lack of confidence in these residents' sense of self-identity. There is nothing that communicates one's desire to be somewhere else and someone else than living within a European castle of some sort. It is only unfortunate that they were born Indonesian, cannot easily move abroad, and make their enormous wealth in this massive Indonesian market. Given the opportunity to make just as much money legally and live just as regally in Europe, there is no doubt that all of them will take up the opportunity.
Of course, PIK is by no means the only one in Jakarta, in Indonesia, or Southeast Asia in general. The gated communities across the region help retain wealth in small pockets, both in terms of geography and social status. And as a result, when a city generates wealth, it also becomes a visual collage of opulent development and lack thereof, giving the desperate entirely false hopes that one day, maybe one day, they will reach a point that they can live, rather than just pass by or work in, one of these fortresses of wealth in surreal neighborhood.
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