Jakarta is bursting at the seams. So where should the new capital be, Jokowi asks Indonesians on social media

President Joko Widodo has revived a decades-old discussion about relocating the nation’s administrative heart from overcrowded, polluted Jakarta

Experts say it’s a possible though lengthy and expensive endeavour

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Jakarta is choked with the world’s worst traffic congestion, according to a 2016 study by Castrol. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:00am, 1 May 2019Updated: 2:04pm, 12 Dec 2019

As the greater Jakarta area strains at the seams from housing 30 million people – more than 10 per cent of the nation’s population – Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo is asking Indonesians for their views on relocating the capital.

“Jakarta now bears two burdens at once: as a centre of government and public services as well as a business centre,” Jokowi tweeted on Monday. “Where do you think Indonesia’s capital should be?”

Jakarta is one of the fastest sinking cities in the world, losing a centimetre a year, and sizeable portions of the city could be underwater by 2050, according to a study by the Bandung Institute of Technology.

Though it just got a new subway system, it still suffers from some of the world’s worst traffic congestion and is prone to regular flooding and occasional earthquakes.

This is not the first time an Indonesian leader has moved to relocate the capital. Proposals to decamp to Palangkaraya, the provincial capital of Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo, surfaced as early as the 1950s under the country’s first president Sukarno.

Widodo’s administration studied the feasibility of relocating to Palangkaraya, which is four times the area of Jakarta, in 2017.