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Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

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Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#101

Post by zppln »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #98
decimalenough wrote: post #17

I used to spend a lot of time in Jakarta for work, and it's an underrated city. Yes, it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok. Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the langua…

Thanks for posting this. Really interesting perspectives Whats the food like for vegetarians/ vegans?

Tempeh is an Indonesian staple and from what I understand pretty popular with vegans.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#102

Post by bouncycastle »

flopsamjetsam wrote: post #61
Froztnova wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly just that it's easy for an American (or at least, myself circa several years ago) to assume that the overwhelmingly vast majority of Muslims live in middle eastern countries, and when I first learned that Indonesia was the world's largest Muslim majority country it proved that mental heuristic to be entirely inaccurate. I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising though, I mean Christianity sure as hell got aroun…

> Mostly just that it's easy for an American (or at least, myself circa several years ago) to assume that the overwhelmingly vast majority of Muslims live in middle eastern countries, and when I first learned that Indonesia was the world's largest Muslim majority country it proved that mental heuristic to be entirely inaccurate. I live in Australia, and when I was growing up I thought the same, even though Indonesia…

Also, the Indonesia that most Australians only ever visit is Bali, which is mostly Hindu.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#103

Post by deepspace »

Froztnova wrote: post #46
cdmckay wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which assumptions are those?

Mostly just that it's easy for an American (or at least, myself circa several years ago) to assume that the overwhelmingly vast majority of Muslims live in middle eastern countries, and when I first learned that Indonesia was the world's largest Muslim majority country it proved that mental heuristic to be entirely inaccurate. I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising though, I mean Christianity sure as hell got aroun…

That's so weird. What do they teach in American schools? Apparently not even basic geography? The fact that Indonesia was Muslim is something I learned very early on - certainly before high school.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#104

Post by projectazorian »

itake wrote: post #75
bogota69 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bangkok is not what you described. Bangkok is a great city, not too polluted, there are not a lot of poor people. Bangkok is like Manila. I spent a lot of time working is South East Asia. Jakarta is the worst city, yes it is big but very filthy like New Delhi or India in general. Second filthiest is Malaysia. The cleanest city is without a doubt Singapore.

> not too polluted Are we talking about the same Bangkok? I'm talking about the Bangkok in Thailand where they literally shut down the schools due to air pollution being so bad [0]. What Bangkok are you referring to? Malaysia is wayyy cleaner than Indonesia, both in air quality and trash on the ground. [0] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/24/bangkok-pollut...

Bangkok has seasonal haze incidents that can get bad enough to close schools etc. Those are a scourge across all of SEA and are generally caused by slash-and-burn agriculture practices. It's much different from having bad AQI year-round.

I'd hardly say Bangkok is a clean air capital, but it's next to the ocean with no significant mountains nearby so usually pollution gets blown out to sea.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#105

Post by izolate »

phainopepla2 wrote: post #82
seattle_spring wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

??? Burmese food is absolutely delicious. Burma Love in SF, Rangoon Bistro or Burma Joy in Portland. They're some of my favorite restaurants.

Burmese food in the US is very different from the food you encounter in the country itself.

Not only is Burmese food in Myanmar far better, but even the small, modest restaurants bring out a whole spread of complimentary small dishes (pickles, salads, crunchy snacks, all kinds of delicious little sides) before the main meal. It's just built into the dining culture there, and it's incredibly generous compared to what you see abroad.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#106

Post by asmosoinio »

asmosoinio wrote: post #99
School-Cotton wrote: post #93

How is "city" defined, for the purposes of this metric? Is it the administrative boundaries of Jakarta according to Indonesian law? The catchment area where a large fraction of people commute to the city center? Something else?

I was wondering the same. I guess it comes from this "UN figure": > The UN figures include a mixture of city proper, metropolitan area, and urban area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities I haven't looked into the details of that definition. But there is a somewhat standard definition to "metropolitan area" derived from something like "area where there is at least X per square km" So it's not related…

If you find a better link for the methodology please let me know.

But simplified it's maybe exactly this from the UN reports glossary:

> Cities: According to the Degree of Urbanization methodology, contiguous geographic areas with a high population density (at least 1,500 people per km2) and a total population of at least 50,000 inhabitants.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#107

Post by Squealer2642 »

asmosoinio wrote: post #95
duffyjp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there ~20 years ago. I had made friends with some Indonesia students in college and joined them on a trip home. We were mostly in Surabaya, but did spend some time in Jakarta as well. We had a great time. The language is a hidden gem, you can learn enough to get around on the flight over which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a…

> ...which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a million loan words you already know. Nitpick: Sounds a lot like Tagalog (Filipino), another SEA language.

Both are Austronesian languages

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#108

Post by alephnerd »

itake wrote: post #79
mmooss wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did the language end up with a Latin alphabet?

Same as Vietnam: No dominate written language at the time of European Colonialization.

> No dominate written language at the time of European Colonialization

Vietnamese used to be written using Chinese orthography just like Japanese.

The French forcibly cracked down on this form of orthography, and following independence, later modernists attempting to copy Ataturk along with latent Sinophobia due to the Chinese colonial era meant this for of orthography has largely been relegated to ceremonial usage.

A similar thing happened with Bahasa Indonesia, as Indonesia's founding leadership was more secular and socialist in mindset compared to neighboring Malaysia where Jawi remained prominent because of the Islamist movement's role in Malaysian independence.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#109

Post by projectazorian »

ecshafer wrote: post #14
ghaff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also imagine a lot of people who are admiring these megacities have never been to one. Jakarta has oceans of scooters and, when I was there to visit some customers with our country manager, she had a driver. With some exceptions like Singapore, SE Asian cities are horrible to get around.

Other than Singapore. I am not sure why SE Asian cities aren't going as all in on mass transit like China. Jakarta has a single subway line for 42 million people. They have some light rail line and buses. If you compare this with Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing its really night and day.

Bangkok has built a lot of transit in the past decade, 6 lines on top of an already-substantial existing network. Still plenty of projects under construction as well. This alone puts it way ahead of Jakarta in terms of quality of life IMO.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#110

Post by alephnerd »

ecshafer wrote: post #14
ghaff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also imagine a lot of people who are admiring these megacities have never been to one. Jakarta has oceans of scooters and, when I was there to visit some customers with our country manager, she had a driver. With some exceptions like Singapore, SE Asian cities are horrible to get around.

Other than Singapore. I am not sure why SE Asian cities aren't going as all in on mass transit like China. Jakarta has a single subway line for 42 million people. They have some light rail line and buses. If you compare this with Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing its really night and day.

> I am not sure why SE Asian cities aren't going as all in on mass transit like China

Eminent domain and mass demolitions were very common in 1990s-2010s China, and to a degree that I have not seen in other authoritarian and nominally communist states like Vietnam or even Laos, let alone other less authoritarian states.

Entire neighborhoods, villages, and towns were razed to build the urban areas that make up China today.

Beijing [0][1], Shanghai [2][3], and other cities across China [4] all saw massive urban demolitions until the Central Government banned them in 2021 during the Evergrande crisis [5] due to limited utility and rising urban discontent.

Back in the day, it was somewhat common to see news about some random Jie commiting a terrorist act in retaliation for being evicted from their homes [6][7] due to this urban demolition program, and partially helped Xi consolidate power as most officials affiliated with these programs were deeply corrupt, and were often felled during the anti-corruption purges (ironically, Xi oversaw similar initiatives in Zhejiang in the 2000s).

Most other governments don't see the utility of implementing a similar style of program.

[0] - https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/06/sport.china

[2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20130324195541/http://www.unhabi...

[3] - https://archive.nytimes.com/sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/201...

[4] - https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002775

[5] - https://english.www.gov.cn/statecouncil/ministries/202108/31...

[6] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-18018827.amp

[7] - https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34450213

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