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Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

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251–260 of 398 posts

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#251

I don’t understand the point of concentrating everything in a megacity. Take New York as an example: the cost of living is through the roof, while the quality of life is often the opposite. Corporations should stop renting offices in the most expensive areas of the country and instead prioritize locations where housing is affordable and people don’t have to spend more than 10 minutes commuting to work. The state shou…

Density has some obvious advantages. It also has a bunch of disadvantages. The millions of people living there seem to think it's worth the tradeoff, at least to the point of having enough inertia not to move elsewhere.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How often are you listening to your own native language and you are confused by two words that sounds similar It confuses the hell out of me when non-natives misplace stress in Ukrainian and use wrong cases. It's that I want to gatekeep, but above certain rate of mistakes it's just difficult to follow what is being said.

Since the war, we have a lot of Ukrainians at our Flemish school. We just make it work, no time for gatekeeping.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Kids learn foreign languages much faster than adults, plus get a lot more support and less judgement on mistakes from adults since school kids don't operate in a highly competitive environment.

But good luck reaching proficient fluency in a foreign language in your 30s where you'll face a lot more gatekeeping especially on the jobs market. Many western nations still gate-keep careers and opportunities based on regional accents alone, let alone not being a native speaker.

And before I get assaulted in the comments with the "umm acksually I could do it just fine it never was a problem for me exceptions, YES I know it's possible, it's just much much harder, especially when you've got a full time job and adult responsibilities, compared to doing it when you're 5-15 on the school playground, playing videogames with mates or watching cartoons.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#253

I don’t understand the point of concentrating everything in a megacity. Take New York as an example: the cost of living is through the roof, while the quality of life is often the opposite. Corporations should stop renting offices in the most expensive areas of the country and instead prioritize locations where housing is affordable and people don’t have to spend more than 10 minutes commuting to work. The state shou…

Nobody's forcing anyone to live in a city, they want to because the jobs and culture and opportunities are there. And companies want to be there because that's where the workers are. It's a feedback loop, I guess cost is the main moderator. There is an argument for decentralizing a little but surely it's the governments job to incentivize that.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese actually has a much smaller set of phonemes (~half as many as English), resulting in extensive homophones. When combined with its greater tendency toward ambiguity, correct use of pitch can actually have a larger impact on intelligibility, as compared to many other languages.

[flagged]

Nice theory, but my experience is exactly the other way around.

Even after several years of learning Chinese I still had trouble communicating with Chinese people, especially those who had no experience talking to foreigners. When I arrived in China and asked the way to the university I was going to (which was close by and very famous) they just didn't get what I was saying. In the end I had to show them the written word.

I don't speak Japanese, but when I arrived and said the name of the city and they immediately understood where I wanted to go. After my experience with Chinese I was flabbergasted that that went so smooth.

I blame the tones in Chinese (which I admit I'm not very good at)

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#255
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a month in Jakarta earlier this year and wasn't impressed. Traffic was terrible. I almost missed my flight due to taking a bike over a car, but then it started pouring rain and I had to huddle under a bridge while I waited for a car. Jakarta has a noise problem. The temples blasting the prayers is disruptive to sleep and inner peace. The traffic does not make anything either. Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at…

> Jakarta has a noise problem. I offer a practical template: has a noise problem. When you say "temples", do you mean masjid (mosque)? It is pretty normal anywhere in the Islamic-majority world to sing prayers over a loud speaker a few times a day.

Cars and mopets have a noise problem not cities.

But I guess the mosque doesn't help.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#256
post #181

I'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 feel the same way about China tbh Like how many of you can name a Chinese movie or pop star or TV show?

The west deliberately blocks Chinese media.

In asia, China's culture is far more prevalent and gaining quickly.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try not to be a woman

Family went together. Mum, dad, and us two boys. ‘07 or so. Very friendly people. But armed soldiers everywhere. Perhaps have changed since then.

Well, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Crisis_(2011%E2%80%93... definitely did change some things around. I currently would not recommend visiting Egypt, when there are so many safer and more pleasant options available.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#258
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The usual patterns that crop up are: 1) Lack of institutional knowledge. No one even knows how to get started and bringing in foreign expertise may be prohibitively expensive. 2) Economics don’t pencil out even in higher income countries compared to BRT systems, especially because high density and heavy traffic means the lines usually have to be grade-separated which adds additional costs compared to an at-grade syst…

1) I really don't see how it prohibilitivly expensive. Much poorer places have built them and there are tons of companies who are willing to do it. Specially if you have a 30 year plan.

2) Another one I don't buy if you have a 30 year plan. Buses have higher operating costs, need more space, have less capacity and the surrounding infrastructure gets more expensive. The only thing BRT is good at, is making it easier to get start because you initially don't need ground infrastructure.

3) This is much more likely.

But Ill grant you what BRT might allow you do to is ban cars from a corridor without to many people being angry, and that is a win by itself.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#259
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everytime I see the ocean of scooters, I wonder how horrible it'd be if scooters weren't invented but instead everyone use cars like in America. Either it'll make the most legendary traffic jam ever or GDP will be cut in half since no one can move anywhere. With our already overcrowded public transport, it's practically the only alternative. I actually wonder how much better American traffic would be if scooters are…

Americans use cars because we can afford them. The Indonesians would too if they could.

Americans use a car because their infrastructure was build to support it. If they had cities like exist in South East Asia they wouldn't use it. Because if they did it would literally be no traffic, because the city would barly move and you wouldn't get anywhere.

These cities already have to much traffic while only a small number of people have cars.

Re: Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world

#260

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…

Why compare Jakarta to Bangkok?

Because they're both hot, polluted, congested and mostly poor, but Bangkok is literally the world's most popular tourist destination city while Jakarta is not.
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