The city of Nusantara, which is under construction today, will eventually replace Jakarta as Indonesia’s new capital.
In August, Indonesia officially opened the city in an inauguration ceremony on the country’s Independence Day.
While the new capital city is not expected to be finished until 2045, hundreds of thousands of workers, including the country’s president, have already moved to the Nusantara.
The outgoing president Joko Widodo will serve out the rest of his term working from Nusantara. Also in August, he held the first cabinet meeting session in the unfinished city, marking the beginning of the transition of political power from Jakarta to Nusantara.
The new city is being carved out of the Borneo jungle, one of the largest stretches of rainforest in the world. President Widodo has said that around 15 percent of the city is complete so far.
Once finished, Nusantara will feature luxurious presidential and vice-presidential palaces and government buildings.
The design also includes cultural parks and botanical gardens, as well as homes for civil servants, police, and the military.
Brand new schools and hospitals are being built as well as a university. There will also be a sanctuary centre for Orangutans, a symbol of the Southeast Asian country.
However, the construction has endured a number of missed deadlines and financial difficulties since being approved in 2019.
The country was forced to scale back the August Independence Day celebrations and withdraw thousands of invites due to a lack of accommodation and food supplies.
The new capital, which lies more than 1,200km away from Jakarta, has so far struggled to put a reliable supply of drinking water and electricity in place. An airport, which was meant to be ready by Independence Day, also remains unfinished.
Nusantara is being billed as a sustainable, high-tech, green alternative to the overcrowded city of Jakarta.
However, environmentalists have warned that the Nusantara construction smack bang in the middle of one of the world’s biggest rainforests could have a disastrous impact.
In particular, experts have warned that the city overlaps with habitats for some rare and endangered species, including orangutans, proboscis monkeys and clouded leopards.
Indonesia’s current capital, home to at least 11 million residents, is the world’s fastest-sinking city as well as one of its most polluted.
Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency has also warned that by 2050, about 25 percent of the city could be submerged.
