On Monday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced the country’s central government will be moved out of Jakarta into a new capital city which will be created on the island of Borneo.
“The location is very strategic – it’s in the center of Indonesia and close to urban areas,” the president said in a televised speech. “The burden Jakarta is holding right now is too heavy as the center of governance, business, finance, trade and services.”
The move comes for a number of reasons — including that Jakarta is sinking.
“Jakarta’s problems are largely man-made,” NPR’s Merrit Kennedy reported earlier this year. “The area’s large population has extracted so much groundwater that it has impacted the ground levels, and many surface water resources are polluted.”
However, that’s far from the only problem Jakarta, which has a population of 10 million, faces. Indonesia’s current capital city is known for having horrible gridlock, some of the world’s worst air and a lack of parks and cultural monuments, according to The New York Times.
The move is estimated to cost about $33 billion, a bill which will be footed by a combination of the government, private investment and public-private partnerships.
The new capital has yet to be named but construction could begin as early as 2021.
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