If anyone is looking for a good movie to get a sense of what Jakarta is like, highly recommend "The Year of Living Dangerously" with Mel Gibson/Sigourney Weaver
Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
21–30 of 398 posts
Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks to be averaging around 250,000 per year over the last decade. That'd be over 12 per 1000. https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/housing-starts
Yes so it looks like the Reddit people are committing major chart-crimes, showing quarterly data as such, rather than annualized rates, and not mentioning it. It looks like this is a source of truth: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=341001...
I have watched reddit become useless for any kind of nuanced debate over the last 5 years. It's rather sad to me, because once upon a time I learned a lot about others views - especially ones I disagree with.
Even HN is much less welcoming of the "I think I agree with you, but walk me through your thinking" replies than it used to be.
I presume this is reflective of a few broader societal trends, and it's.. not good.
Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
#23Alternative Link: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/jakarta-world-s-most-p... Key Facts: Number of megacities, urban areas with 10 million or more inhabitants has quadrupled from 8 in 1975 to 33 in 2025. Jakarta is now the world’s most populous city, with nearly 42 million residents. The current population of Indonesia is 286 million. In 2019, Indonesia said it will be moving its capital to Nusantara, a new city…
> In 2019, Indonesia said it will be moving its capital to Nusantara, a new city which is under construction.
Because Jakarta is literally sinking into the ocean. It also has a terrible flood problem which is only going to get worse. Doesn’t bode well for the population.
Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. It's also easy to have cities grow fast, if you're primarily a rural/agrarian nation, and suddenly have a transition to become urban. This was (for example) Canada in the 1900s. Mostly rural, yet now it's mostly urban. Canada saw fast growth of cities back then. It's maintaining large cities…
> Canada saw fast growth of cities back then. It still does—Vancouver and Calgary have both almost doubled in population over the past 30 years [0] [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver#Demographics [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary#Civic_...
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Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
#25I'm always surprised how big the population of Indonesia is yet it seems culturally underrepresented in the world compared to a lot of smaller countries Almost 300 million people but it rarely comes up in the news or pop media
I also did a double take when I learned that they were Muslim-majority too. It flies in the face of a lot of assumptions.
Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
#26Alternative Link: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/jakarta-world-s-most-p... Key Facts: Number of megacities, urban areas with 10 million or more inhabitants has quadrupled from 8 in 1975 to 33 in 2025. Jakarta is now the world’s most populous city, with nearly 42 million residents. The current population of Indonesia is 286 million. In 2019, Indonesia said it will be moving its capital to Nusantara, a new city…
To add some more detail regarding the new capital, Jakarta has some structural governance problems in the sense that it's very hard to improve infrastructure improve / stop the sinking of the city (mostly caused from over reliance on ground water pumping and permitting corruption / bad river management). Those problems might never be solved.
And separate of it's economic power it remains a center of power where the city mayor/governor always becomes a major national political figure.
Indonesia is actually a plurality of distinct island cultures, but with Jakarta, Java and Javanese culture sits at the top of the national political hierarchy. (Not to mention a sort of internal Javanese colonialism similar to the USSR).
The new capital could be part of dismantling some of the legacy internal Javanese power structures.
(To add a further detail re. Java vs. Indonesia, because of the mercator projection it's hard to see how big Indonesia is. It would stretch from Maine, past California almost to Anchorage).
Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The West just refuses to build anything. Whereas in Asia its not uncommon to build entire cites from scratch.
Canada has been building housing at a much higher rate than the US in the last 2 decades. Not enough, but more.
They have been underbuilding compared to their population trends as we see their prices continue to skyrocket
Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
#28If anyone is looking for a good movie to get a sense of what Jakarta is like, highly recommend "The Year of Living Dangerously" with Mel Gibson/Sigourney Weaver https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/
Can't speak for the accuracy at the time but great film!
Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Canada has been building housing at a much higher rate than the US in the last 2 decades. Not enough, but more.
They have been underbuilding compared to their population trends as we see their prices continue to skyrocket
Down substantially from the peak in 2022. And that's nominal prices. Adjusting for inflation will show that real prices are lower now than they were in 2017.
Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
#30Previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46038863
Who submitted that?