[HN Gopher] Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
___________________________________________________________________
Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
Author : skx001
Score : 454 points
Date : 2025-11-25 06:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| netsharc wrote:
| Article is a paywalled summary of the UN press release:
| https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2025/11/press...
|
| And the full report as PDF:
| https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
| metalman wrote:
| Canada has less people, even with a 10% increase in the last 4
| years through imigration, some of which is from Indonesea
| presumably including a significant number from Jakarta, where the
| civil infrastructure must be epic
| skx001 wrote:
| The West just refuses to build anything. Whereas in Asia its
| not uncommon to build entire cites from scratch.
| bbarnett wrote:
| 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 once the fast growth is over,
| that is a different story. How will, for example, China look
| in 50+ years? 100+ years? When all its newly built mega-city
| projects are crumbling.
| gucci-on-fleek wrote:
| > 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#Demogr
| aphics
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary#
| Civic_...
| catlover76 wrote:
| > Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a
| centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or
| communist nations.
|
| This is generally true, but Indonesia is neither
| skx001 wrote:
| > Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a
| centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or
| communist nations.
|
| I would like to pushback on this assumption. I made that
| point because you mentioned Canada and its rapid
| immigration rise in the last 5 years. Western countries,
| namely Canada can do a lot to build more to ease the
| pressures on its housing demand.
|
| Vast amounts of land is available to build amazing cities.
| There are specialist architect firms that can plan the most
| beautiful, walkable, livable, affordable cities very close
| to major hubs and metros currently.
|
| In the 50s/60s/70s these very Western countries, spent a
| lot and built all kinds of infrastructure which led to
| meaningful increases in quality of life and perhaps created
| the most prosperous generation in these countries.
|
| Even now when any government in the West wants to really do
| something, they don't really care about anything and it
| gets done, the money magically appears, the votes are found
| no matter how unpopular it may be. But for some reason
| building infrastructure, housing, mass transit has been
| completely forgotten.
|
| The real bottlenecks are governance, bureaucracy, and
| NIMBYism. Like a few comments above pointed out, its
| keeping boomers happy with their high property values at
| the expense of the young.
|
| Some things just don't make sense to me as an outsider. A
| few examples I read recently.
|
| [1] It will take three decades to turn an 18-mile stretch
| of the A66 road in northern England into a dual
| carriageway. [2] It will take 20+ years just to add another
| runway at Heathrow London and cost $64 Billion Dollars! [3]
| While Dubai is building a brand new whole airport for $35
| Billion, I think the worlds largest when its finished.
|
| Nearly all of the political problems in Canada, UK,
| Australia and much of the US (NYC,SF, etc.) will completely
| go away if they had the "Build, Baby Build" attitude. Just
| build housing like there is no tomorrow.
|
| There is no such thing as an "oversupply" of a basic human
| need, livable shelter.
|
| I can assure you, knowing how Asian countries like China
| approach governance, Chinese cities will have no major
| issues in 50+ years. Any outstanding issues will will
| resolved well before they start to become a problem with
| various 5-10 year plans. The same for Malaysia, Singapore
| etc.
|
| [1] https://archive.md/PcOZV
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-chooses-heathrow-
| airport...
|
| [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/29/dubais-
| ruler-ann...
| bbarnett wrote:
| At no point did I mention the current immigration rates
| in Canada, over the last five years. Instead, I mentioned
| historic growth, which is not necessarily immigration,
| going back 100 plus years.
|
| In the early 1900s, on farms, Canadian families were
| much, much larger than they are now. Immigration was
| certainly a thing, and contributed to those numbers, but
| most of that growth was through simple population growth
| domestically.
|
| Speaking to the development of cities in the past, that
| development was within certain strictures and guidelines,
| but entirely handled by the private sector.
|
| No state-owned companies were developing houses. There
| were very, very rare exceptions where during situations
| like the end of World War II, Canada _paid for_ base
| housing for its soldiers returning from war. Yet these
| were extraordinary circumstances. This was during the
| tail end of a wartime economy, and part of the transition
| to a peacetime economy. This was not, and is not the
| normal way that Canada operates as a democracy. Not only
| was it to provide housing for all of the returning
| soldiers as they slowly left other countries that they
| were stationed in, it was also to provide jobs for people
| leaving factories that were producing munitions and other
| instruments of war.
|
| Canada managed this transition exceptionally well,
| primarily due to projects just like this.
|
| The point in all of this is that growth was driven
| organically by people simply moving to the cities. Again,
| yes, the cities have a planning department which dictates
| what may be where, how much residential space can be in a
| certain area, if there are going to be shops or malls or
| local shopping locations, where roads are going to be and
| so on. But that is an overall contributed by the
| community development plan. Developers have a say.
| Citizens have a say. This is called democracy.
|
| Do not confuse nimbyism, which is primarily an American
| problem, with issues that have to do with building in
| Canada.
|
| Again, I did not say there are no issues, I said NIMBYism
| is primarily in the US.
|
| The real problem in Canada, and this is a solid show of
| how democracy works, is that people are concerned about
| things like the environment.
|
| It's a little difficult to stomach that the very same
| people that will scream their heads off if environmental
| issues are not handled correctly, then get upset that
| building a house requires environmental assessments of
| land, environmental assessments of how population density
| will affect the land, insistence is that developers build
| parks, paths and green spaces.
|
| When you hear the astronomical cost of building a house,
| when you hear the cost of red tape, what's being left out
| is that parts of the red tape are commitments to build
| things like parks, green spaces, paths, places for people
| to bike and walk without getting hit by cars.
|
| All of these things add cost to the price of a house.
| They also add cost because developers do not follow
| plans, but constantly want to renegotiate over and over,
| and this indeed stretches out the time to build an entire
| subdivision.
|
| Developers are also on hook for certain things, if
| they're building an entire subdivision. Roads, traffic
| lights, all sorts of things like this, including making
| sure that there's space for a local grocery store, so you
| don't have to drive or walk endless miles. Even things
| like the sidewalks when you're building a whole
| subdivision.
|
| As a democracy in Canada, we like this. We prefer this.
| We prefer that you can get around with a car, but also
| you can get to your local grocery store if you want to
| just walk or take a bus a short distance.
|
| If you are a person buying a single lot and wanting to
| build on that lot, things are not anywhere near as
| complex or onerous.
|
| Yes, there are still environmental assessments. But who
| wants those environmental assessments? That's right,
| everyone, including the person buying the house, unless,
| of course, it might mean that they don't have a house
| quite as cheaply. Then, suddenly, they aren't
| environmentalists.
|
| As someone who has bought land, that was pretty much the
| largest block on building. When it came to digging a
| well, when it came to building the house, when it came to
| the building plan that I submitted to my local
| municipality? All of that passed with flying colors
| unless of course I was doing something weird, such as
| building too close to the edge of the property or
| something else that was covered by simple, easy to
| understand bylaws.
|
| I certainly support environmental assessments, but again
| I reiterate for a single person building a house they are
| typically not a problem.
|
| There are certain segments of any society which believe
| that there should be no government involvement, in almost
| any portion of a society. These people are too far on one
| side, just as communism or dictatorships are too far on
| the other side. As with almost anything, moderation is
| key.
|
| In Canada, we try to enable free enterprise. We try to
| keep red tape and other such issues as easy to bypass,
| and easy to work with as possible, while simultaneously
| ensuring that there is some degree of central planning
| and management that also has democratic citizen input.
|
| Yet you will constantly see people of that belief trying
| to claim that all the issues with building houses have to
| do with some amount of red tape. Of NIMBYism. Yet when I
| look in my local community, I see people of all ages. I
| don't see the disparaging term that you used, boomers,
| causing a problem. There are people young, there are old
| people, there are people in their 30s, all owning houses.
|
| Most people in Canada do not buy houses until their 30s
| or 40s. You may think this is a strange claim, but who
| wants to buy a house when they're in university? Who
| wants to buy a house on the first couple of years of
| their first job? Who wants to buy a house before they're
| even married? It doesn't make sense. It's not logical.
|
| While I am an older person, I'm certainly not a boomer,
| as you call it, yet at the same time I did not buy a
| house until I was in my late 30s.
|
| In Canada, housing pricing is where it is because of two
| primary reasons. The first is foreign investment. It's
| been so bad that in the past, that we have actually had
| motorandums on people that are not Canadian citizens
| buying houses. We have put, for example, in cities like
| Vancouver, taxes on empty houses because so many people
| from China were buying houses as investment structures.
|
| The second reason is the lowest rate of inflation for the
| longest period of time, for decades.
|
| Prior to the last few years, interest rates have been
| lower than they have ever been, and for a period of time
| longer than they had ever been.
|
| This made housing cheaper than it has ever been before.
| Cheaper because when the low interest rates appeared,
| what the cost of a house is, is set by something called
| the market. Pricing is market derived. Pricing is
| predicated upon by what people will pay. So when interest
| rates drop dramatically from an amount of say 10 or 12%
| down to 0 or 1 or 2% over a period of about 5 or 6 years,
| suddenly housing is immensely more attractive. If you go
| to any mortgage calculator and use Canadian mortgage
| calculators, you can see the moving of interest rate from
| 1 or 2% at the bank, which I have had personally, up to
| say 11 or 12%, will literally more than double your
| monthly payment.
|
| This means that if this condition exists for a long
| period of time, say almost 20 years like it did in
| Canada, slowly the price of houses will increase because
| people can afford more. This is how markets work. If
| people can afford more for housing then housing prices
| will go up just like any other type of free market
| competitive economy.
|
| You can see this happening on any graph with the average
| price of housing compared to the price of inflation and
| you can see over 20 years the pricing of Canadian houses
| going up more than the rate of inflation and this is
| primarily why. Conjoin that with the massive speculation
| in the Canadian market and the pricing increases more.
|
| If you take a house at $200,000 at 12% interest and you
| take a house at $400,000 at 2% interest, you will pay the
| same monthly payment approximately.
|
| Canadian housing was quite affordable until interest
| rates went up. And slowly, as interest rates are higher,
| the price of Canadian housing cooled off and had started
| to come down a little bit, but now once again rates are
| dropping.
|
| There are always blips in the marketplace. There are
| always shifts and changes. I have personally been through
| three separate recession events including the 2008
| recession event, and all of these situations cause
| hardship for people first entering the housing market.
|
| But this will pass. And it will pass and be solved. It
| won't be solved by turning to communism, to
| dictatorships. It won't be solved by getting rid of
| environmentalism or getting rid of planned communities.
|
| It will be solved over a period of a few years as the
| market adjusts, and people can once again afford housing.
|
| It will do so because the very people making the
| decisions, are not demonic old people. People have
| children. They have grandchildren. They want the best for
| their children and grandchildren. They want the best for
| their community.
|
| You can be any age and be on the town council. You can be
| any age and be an MP.
|
| Canada has had MPs who are under 20 in the last decade.
| Canada has had many MPs that are in their 30s.
|
| There is no conspiracy. There is no attempt to stop young
| people from getting houses. There is no attempt to stop
| there from being a higher density housing in communities.
| We have plenty of land in Canada. We have plenty of space
| in Canada.
|
| This lengthy response was engendered by the fact that you
| quite literally put words in my mouth. It was also
| engendered by the fact that people seem to think, even in
| Canada, that problems existing in Silicon Valley or in
| high-density US cities are the same problems that exist
| in Canada. They aren't. They are not the same problems.
| They are not caused by the same problems. It is not like
| you can copy and paste issues from American megacities
| into Canadian, much smaller cities.
|
| The best way to fix some of the problems in California is
| to enforce open bidding on houses. When you do that, you
| reduce the uncertainty in bids, you reduce market
| pressures to increase the price of housing.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Canada has been building housing at a much higher rate than
| the US in the last 2 decades. Not enough, but more.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Hrmm. What data source can I see to demonstrate this? I
| looked at a chart I have referenced before that shows
| nationwide USA housing starts over the last 20 years
| ranging from 2 to 8 per 1000 people. Then I searched for
| one for Canada and found one suggesting 1-2 per 1000 since
| 2005. And, evidently, the situation in Canada as
| developed/deteriorated to the extent there's a whole
| subreddit for the canadian housing crisis?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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
| jeffbee wrote:
| 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.stat
| can.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=341001...
| mh- wrote:
| 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.
| daedrdev wrote:
| They have been underbuilding compared to their population
| trends as we see their prices continue to skyrocket
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/average-house-prices
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Why spend billions building when you can just keep raising
| rents on existing infrastructure?
| parpfish wrote:
| I don't even know what it would it even look like to "build a
| city" from scratch in the US. who does the building and puts
| together the central plan?
|
| does the government build a bunch of public housing and a
| publicly owned commercial district? i guess they kind of have
| experience doing this with military bases, but at some point
| you need to encourage a bunch of private development and
| ownership, right?
|
| or would the government just incentivize private developers
| to start building in the middle of nowhere and hope that a
| city arises as an emergent phenomenon? that approach seems
| like it would be rife with abuse and waste.
|
| seems like this would be a lot easier to do with an
| authoritarian regime that could just decree "we're building a
| city here. the following industries will move their
| headquarters"
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| It's not particularly difficult to start a new city.
|
| The government simply asks large companies to open
| offices/factories in the new city in exchange for tax
| breaks/subsidies. Or give funding to a university to open a
| satellite campus. All you need is a promise for like 20k
| people to initially move. Then the government builds roads
| and utility networks. Private developers will also build
| housing if given the right financial incentive.
|
| The 20k people will automatically lead to the same number
| moving in due to cheap housing, or for creating every day
| businesses, hospitals, schools etc. Within a couple of
| years you can setup up a feedback loop where the population
| is growing at 5-10% every year. There is no need to force
| anyone to do anything. Financial incentives are enough.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| The western approach would almost certainly be a public-
| private partnership; we do that with all meaningful infra
| projects, where multiple industry consortia put together
| proposals and then one is selected to move forward. For
| example, for the ION Light Rail in Waterloo Region (~$1B),
| the winning consortium was composed of engineering and
| construction firms/consultants, a operations company that
| would run the system, plus a financier:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrandLinq
|
| That said, for a project the scale of building a city, I
| can imagine it might actually be faster and more efficient
| for the government to just plan and build everything itself
| and then sell it off to private entities later.
| toenail wrote:
| Starting a city is easy, growing it into a real city is the
| hard part. If you look at the fastest growing cities of the
| last decades, they had economic freedom or booming
| industries, nothing that requires authoritarianism.
| steego wrote:
| Honestly, if you build transit, developers will build.
|
| I wouldn't call it "building a city", but if you look at
| Northern Virginia today, you'll find that vertical
| districts are popping up along the Silver Line metro that
| now extends past Dulles airport.
|
| At the end of the metro, there is literally a "town center"
| residential area on one side with buildings around 5
| stories tall. On the other side of the tracks is literally
| fields, but the roads have been laid out like Sim City with
| empty plots and developers are now beginning to construct
| buildings starting from the outside perimeter first,
| working their way toward the metro station.
|
| Throughout the DC suburbs, you will find densely populated
| areas with relatively tall vertical buildings (15-20
| stories) that simply were not there 20 years ago. Reston is
| a good example. I've watched 4-6 buildings (over 10
| stories) get built in Reston alone. They mostly started
| when the the metro line was finished.
| botanrice wrote:
| tysons is a good example as well. I always think the
| development of the DC metro is some of the most
| impressive in the sense of 'cities' popping up along the
| train lines.
|
| I haven't travelled the entire country but I've never
| seen anything quite like Silver Spring, Bethesda, or as
| you say, Reston. Super interesting.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| If I had Musk or Bezos levels of wealth my middle-age
| retirement project would be buying a million acres
| somewhere and playing real life SimCity.
| renewiltord wrote:
| City of Irvine corp and California Forever corp are two
| examples. But billionaires in the US are constrained by
| everyone else. The power of democracy is strength in
| numbers and we have them now though we didn't fifty years
| ago.
| dboreham wrote:
| Quick note that several cities were built from scratch in
| the UK in the 20th century. E.g. Milton Keynes. (City using
| the American definition, not the cathedral thing).
| Squealer2642 wrote:
| The civil infrastructure in Jakarta is horrible, especially
| compared to other Asian cities.
| skx001 wrote:
| Alternative 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 which is under construction.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| ecshafer wrote:
| 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.
| filloooo wrote:
| Democratic governments are weak on deficit spending,
| especially poor ones, the debt from their tiny stretch of
| high speed rail almost became a scandal.
| ghaff wrote:
| Probably a combination of overall wealth and government
| policies/stability/priorities. I'd probably add Hong Kong
| to the list of cities with pretty good public transit but,
| overall, it's pretty bad in that area of the world relative
| to cities that you'd generally consider to be "good."
| lurk2 wrote:
| 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 system.
|
| 3) Corruption makes development impossible. No well-
| established processes for expropriation exist, or the
| country is given over to clientelism such that landlords
| won't give up what they own and hamper the development
| process via political connections.
|
| BRT is usually the most effective solution in places where
| grade-separated rail is not yet viable as it allows a
| right-of-way network to be established that can later be
| upgraded to rail. This doesn't solve problem 3, which
| requires a comparatively authoritarian approach to overcome
| the incentive problems at play; this is why the Chinese
| have generally excelled in the space over the last 20
| years.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even in the US, a lot of right-of-ways were taken by the
| government for rail and, later, highways (which
| intersected with earlier railroads in many cases) before
| it would have been as difficult a process as it would be
| today. Not a political comment so much as an observation
| that it's harder to just take private land today.
| snicky wrote:
| For anyone interested in the issues with Indonesian
| economy, politics and development may I suggest a great
| book: Indonesia, Etc. by Elizabeth Pisani.
| panick21_ wrote:
| 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.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > The only thing BRT is good at, is making it easier to
| get start because you initially don't need ground
| infrastructure.
|
| The only thing rice is good at is being a cheap source of
| nutrition.
| nerdralph wrote:
| KL has subways. Even better is the KL city bus network
| which is free, air conditioned, and has free wifi. Despite
| Malaysia being a nominally muslim state, I found it
| multicultural and tolerant. If it wasn't for the heat and
| humidity, I'd consider it a great place to retire.
| gorbachev wrote:
| KL?
| speedyapoc wrote:
| Kuala Lumpur
| YorickPeterse wrote:
| If you leave KL city and go to the surrounding areas,
| such as Petaling Jaya or Subang Jaya, it becomes more
| manageable (entering KL from there feels like a 5-10C
| temperature increase). It gets better the further you go
| of course, but for tourists that may be a bit tricky as
| it won't be as easy to get around (at least not without a
| car).
| ghaff wrote:
| I was in KL for a business event. Can't say I cared for
| it much but it was just a few days. Didn't interact with
| public transit at all.
|
| Did like Penang afterwards though.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The water table surely has something to do with it, but
| they could put much of it above ground like Bangkok does
| (erm, Bangkok should be listed as doing ok, even if they
| aren't doing as well as Singapore).
|
| China built A LOT in the last 15 years. Beijing before 2008
| had line 1, 2, a couple of suburban lines (13 and another
| one out east), and that was it. I don't think any other
| country has ever built infrastructure so quickly, so it
| isn't really fair to compare them to China.
| ecshafer wrote:
| That is a fair argument. China's level of infrastructure
| development is pretty absurd.
| projectazorian wrote:
| 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.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > 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/sustainablecitiesc
| ollecti...
|
| [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/20
| 2108/31...
|
| [6] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
| china-18018827.amp
|
| [7] - https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34450213
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Even in democratic Taiwan they have this mindset to an
| extent - private land must not stand in the way of
| infrastructure.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Taiwan's mass urban demolition spree happened towards the
| tail end of authoritarian rule, and did in fact play a
| role in garnering mass support for the democracy
| movement.
|
| After democracy, Taiwan shifted towards trying to
| preserve traditional neighborhoods or working to
| normalize unofficial neighborhoods and slums - basically
| adopting a bottom up instead of top down approach [0]
|
| [0] - https://www.taiwan-
| panorama.com/en/Articles/Details?Guid=5fc...
| nguyenkien wrote:
| Heck, even US use these tactic:
| https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/brent-cebul-
| tearing-do...
| exhilaration wrote:
| _In Beijing alone, some activists said more than 1
| million people were forced from their homes to make way
| for new sports venues for last year 's Olympics._
|
| Wow...
| ghaff wrote:
| And, while you can pick and choose data, Beijing's
| Olympic stadium is not really very widely used as far as
| I can tell. Of course you can also debate whether a lot
| of urban revitalization projects--even if leading to
| popular settings/venues--were worth the cost to
| neighborhoods that were basically flattened.
| bwv848 wrote:
| And don't forget Beijing's forced eviction of tens of
| thousands of so called 'low end population' in the middle
| of winter.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/asia/china-
| beijing-...
| wdb wrote:
| Or electric bikes and cars
| eaksa wrote:
| Jakarta doesn't have one metro line. It has 9 lines which
| it variously calls light rail, commuter trains, etc. but
| are metro lines in all but name, in terms of frequency,
| infrastructure, and service patterns. It's not quite
| Beijing or Tokyo, but it's also not as wealthy as either
| city.
| exidy wrote:
| It's a case of better late than never. KL has a reasonable
| mix of subway, monorail, elevated and suburban rail.
| Bangkok's above-ground BTS has been very popular and they
| have been building subways as well. Hanoi has a master plan
| and has opened its first subway line in 2021 and second in
| 2024. Manila is also digging subways right now and has
| wisely called in the Japanese to do it, given that city is
| simultaneously subject to typhoons, floods and earthquakes.
| anticodon wrote:
| Infrastructure is expensive. It costs lots of resources and
| human labor and intricate planning (most SE Asia cities are
| not looking like anything there was planned).
|
| Most countries on the planet simply cannot afford good
| infrastructure. I'm almost sure there's not even enough
| resources like energy and metals to create a good
| infrastructure in every country on Earth.
| 47282847 wrote:
| > I'm almost sure there's not even enough resources like
| energy and metals to create a good infrastructure in
| every country
|
| As better public transport infrastructure vastly reduces
| the number of cars, and centralizes the requirement for
| both material and energy, I doubt that is the case. Buses
| and trains need far less of both than the population-
| equivalent number of cars/motorcycles.
| geodel wrote:
| Hehe. Great point. I have lived and worked in 2 Delhi and
| Mumbai in India. With such terrible living condition,
| traffic, pollution and so on it sucked the soul out of me. At
| least I found it so bad in Mumbai that many a times while
| leaving from work to hostel, I would literally cry on train
| platform with massive crowd pushing and shoving from all
| directions while trying to get into bursting at seams trains.
|
| And this all is 20 years back. During this time thing have
| gone worse many times over.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| I've liked living in Delhi recently, much less congested
| than Bengaluru that gnaws on my soul with its insane
| traffic. The only reasonable way to live in India is to
| live away from the main streets, ideally in a gated
| community which is a bikeable distance from work.
| mcmoor wrote:
| 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 more popular.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Americans use cars because we can afford them. The
| Indonesians would too if they could.
| wraptile wrote:
| How would Indonesians use cars that cannot go anywhere?
| It's not about affording but about people/m2 compression.
|
| Here's a quick napkin math: a 1.3m2 scooter can take 1-3
| people, a toyota camry of 8.8m2 can take 1-5 people. This
| gives the humble scooter aprox 3-5 times the space
| efficiency that of a car.
|
| Not to mention the agility and parking benefits of
| scooters. There's no way any SEA city could get rid of
| scooters in favor of cars. Scooters are incredibly under-
| rated in the west and my favorite tool here in SEA - it's
| peak practical engineering at scale.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That makes sense, but I have to assume driving a scooter
| is a pretty dangerous way to get around a giant city?
|
| I have biker friends who call cars "cages", and I get the
| sentiment. But they have a lot more concussions than any
| other group of people I know.
| mcmoor wrote:
| Since this is scooters who rarely even reach >150cc, it's
| actually quite safe since it's slow and light. There are
| always high risk when we want to go to very rough roads
| that are also full of trucks (common in rural areas), but
| in well maintained roads like lots of Jakarta, it's
| mostly fine.
|
| Though it really isn't helped by attitude of people
| around here who aren't even wearing helms.
| mcmoor wrote:
| I got curious to see how many people have cars in
| Jakarta. While cars per capita of Indonesia is extremely
| low (~80 / 1000 people), the one for Jakarta is at
| respectable ~300/1000 people, not far from NYC at
| ~400/1000 people. Still far away from other cities
| though.
|
| From my experience also, scooter is still heavily used
| even by people that have cars because there's just a lot
| of small roads and neighborhood where it's very
| unsuitable for cars. This also makes scooter taxi very
| popular here since it's cheaper, faster, and can reach
| the deepest parts of Jakarta.
| teekert wrote:
| Most Dutch people can afford cars, but many are on bikes
| (including cargo/e-bikes), about 27% of all "movements"
| [0]. This is because of the way our infrastructure is set
| up, the bike is very often optimal (special bike lanes,
| shorter routes, better/free parking at destination or
| public transport hubs). Most people do own a car though.
|
| [0] https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/verkeer-en-
| vervoer/pe...
| brabel wrote:
| True, but if there was a city of 40 million in the
| Netherlands, I'm afraid very few would venture out on
| bikes there too.
| teekert wrote:
| It would be subways then, not cars I suspect. At least in
| a city like Rotterdam (673K inhabitants) that is by far
| the optimal way to get around, cars are really almost
| useless in the city center.
|
| Here, most of the street is already reserved for bikes,
| with the sidewalks for pedestrians [0]. This is all a one
| way street.
|
| [0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/EkUV5WQaQXFgv8KG8
| brnt wrote:
| Car ownership correlates negatively with urbanization in
| NL, so no, I don't think so. And no 40M city (or 4M city)
| convinces me driving is an acceptable way to get around.
| citrusybread wrote:
| I can't find the link anymore, but aeons ago I read a
| blog post on here claiming that the Netherlands is better
| characterized as a city state, if you're looking at it
| from an American point of view: the entire country is
| about the same size as NYC's metro area, and around the
| same population.
| panick21_ wrote:
| 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.
| mortarion wrote:
| The Netherlands had over 1000KM (621 miles) of traffic jams
| Monday morning.
| Sharlin wrote:
| > 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.
| awongh wrote:
| 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).
| vkou wrote:
| New capitals also help prevent revolutions and uprisings.
| It's a lot easier to have a government that's insulated from
| the unrest of the masses, when everyone in its capital is
| loyal to it.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Some say the straight Paris boulevards were intended for
| cannon grapeshot ...
| vkou wrote:
| France had the inverse problem, all the nobles were
| sequestered away in Versailles, and weren't particularly
| interested in actually running the state.
| doener wrote:
| Previous submission:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46038863
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Who submitted that?
| doener wrote:
| I did
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I know!!! By this time I should realize there's no place
| for irony...
| canyp wrote:
| doener had submitted it previously.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| See my comment just above yours.
| superconduct123 wrote:
| 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
| Froztnova wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Why? It's a big religion in the world and I heard it grows at
| 30% per year
| rar00 wrote:
| typo? Rounding it up to 2 billion, 30% means 600 million
| per year
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Maybe. Could be somebody was repeating some sort of
| misinformation. Quick check says more like 20% in 10
| years.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| How much of that is just because people aren't allowed to
| leave the religion though? My whole family would be
| considered Catholic if we still had those sorts of old
| thinking rules that Islam still has. Instead we have lots
| of people becoming Catholic and lots leaving balancing out.
| cdmckay wrote:
| Which assumptions are those?
| lordnacho wrote:
| Ask someone in the West what the largest muslim country is.
| Froztnova wrote:
| 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 around too.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Yeah if i only went by TV news i'd come to the same
| general conclusion. And if i narrowed it down to just Fox
| i'd probably think it was the UK.
| flopsamjetsam wrote:
| > 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 are a very close
| neighbour of ours. Indonesia is featured quite a bit in
| our local news these days, and that together with lots of
| Aussie tourists in Indonesia, plus lots of Indonesian
| students studying here, has made us a little more
| knowledgeable about our neighbours.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| Also, the Indonesia that most Australians only ever visit
| is Bali, which is mostly Hindu.
| aruggirello wrote:
| It seems things are improving for Christians in Indonesia
| in 2025 - or is the data missing?
|
| https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/
| screye wrote:
| I would treat these rankings with suspicions.
|
| I checked them for a few nations where I had solid on-
| the-ground knowledge, and the ranks and full-profile
| descriptions are straight up false. Usually propaganda
| involves lying by omission or hyperbole. In this case, it
| is just wrong.
| mmooss wrote:
| India (also not Middle Eastern) has the largest
| population of Muslim people, but it is not 'majority
| Muslim'.
| rafram wrote:
| Only 20% of the Muslims in the world live in the Middle
| East.
| elgenie wrote:
| The top five countries in the world by Muslim population
| are not in the Middle East/North Africa region:
| Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria.
| deepspace wrote:
| 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.
| Froztnova wrote:
| TBH, without going into overmuch detail, I wouldn't
| generalize from my educational experience to the American
| educational system as a whole. I think it was better in a
| lot of ways, and worse in a few ways, than what most
| people would have received, and I wouldn't be surprised
| if there were some particular holes in my knowledge due
| to taking part in multiple curricula from different
| institutions.
| faizmokh wrote:
| Now figure out how Christianity got around in SEA region.
| lurk2 wrote:
| He's being obtuse, it isn't common knowledge at all.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > What do they teach in American schools? Apparently not
| even basic geography?
|
| This doesn't fall under the category of basic geography.
| I can guarantee you that the majority of people you
| attended school with would not be able to locate
| Indonesia on a map, much less tell you about the
| religions practiced there.
| screye wrote:
| There no middle-eastern countries among the top 5 muslim
| countries by population.
|
| It goes: Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh &
| Nigeria, in that order.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| You must not have known about Malaysia then either?
| Froztnova wrote:
| Correct, it was around the time I learned how big Islam was
| in certain parts of Southeast Asia in general. It's just
| massively under-represented in news and popular culture and
| my historical/geographic education never really went into
| much detail on Asia.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Check out the predominant races there, you've probably never
| heard of them!
| lurk2 wrote:
| They don't have a huge culture industry yet (or at least, not
| one that appeals to English-speaking audiences), but they've
| become a lot more prominent on the internet in the last 5 years
| due to better infrastructure and integration into various
| English speaking social networks (via both social media and
| people travelling in and out of Indonesia).
|
| It's a Muslim majority country and very conservative, so a lot
| of the themes you'd find in American film, music, and
| literature wouldn't make much sense there, and the media that
| has commercial potential outside of Indonesia is generally
| coming from wealthy households that don't have much to do with
| how the average Indonesian really lives (Nicole Zefanya being
| the example that comes to mind).
|
| Indonesians (at least the ones who speak English) are quite
| similar to Latinos in that they have a desire to be accepted
| into the English-speaking world not only personally but
| culturally. This can manifest in attempts to whitewash oneself
| to fit in, adopting whatever seems to be popular on English-
| speaking social media, leading to comparatively old trends
| propagating in these countries.
|
| You saw the same thing with the Chinese and the Koreans back in
| the 2000s and both developed their own internationally-
| competitive culture industries, but those were both secular
| countries already well-integrated into the international
| system. I wouldn't expect to see anything quite like that in
| Indonesia until at least 2030, when more of the digital natives
| come of age.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Feels like in the West the only Indonesian movie that got
| popular is _The Raid_ , which had a Welsh director anyway.
| And, uh, _The Act of Killing_ which was also made by a Brit.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| For anyone else who enjoyed The Raid, the sub-genre of
| graphic and brutally violent Indonesian action movies is a
| gem.
|
| The Raid 2; The Night Comes For Us; The Shadow
| Strays....those should get anyone started going down the
| rabbit hole.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > both developed their own internationally-competitive
| culture industries
|
| Korea definitely, but China? Seems like most of China's
| modern cultural export came from Hong Kong, and even that has
| stopped. Conventional wisdom is that the Three Body Problem
| couldn't be published today.
|
| I'm curious what (homegrown) Chinese cultural products are
| internationally competitive today. China seems to be punching
| far below their weight, considering their population and
| their economic position.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Seems like most of China's modern cultural export came
| from Hong Kong, and even that has stopped.
|
| You're probably right. I'm just saying that 20 years ago
| the label of being "Made in China" meant something was
| cheap and bad. The business culture still isn't great from
| what I hear but people are more comfortable than ever
| buying Chinese products and I've been hearing that more
| exchange students have been going to China to study.
|
| The impression I had of China's cultural exports was mostly
| from having seen more Chinese expatriates and immigrants
| openly engaging with e.g. Chinese music and fashion
| influencers. This wasn't particularly common 20 years ago;
| I started noticing it around 2019.
|
| The other thing I should note is that when I said
| internationally competitive I primarily meant outside of
| the Anglosphere. K-dramas are an interesting one because
| you can find women (it's almost always women) of all ages
| from all over the world who watch them. Korean media is not
| unheard of in the Anglosphere but it is not nearly as
| popular as it is outside of the Anglosphere.
|
| It's possible China doesn't have anything like this yet,
| and maybe it never will due to being comparatively
| censorious, but my perception is that sentiment towards
| China has improved quite a bit outside of the Anglosphere.
| I haven't done reading on that; it's just a hunch.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| Xanxia and Wuxia
| stickfigure wrote:
| As far as I can tell, that export mostly came out of Hong
| Kong and has mostly stopped.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| Most of my contact with it has been via TV shows and
| English/Korean writers
| elgenie wrote:
| They're #4 by population, and the world's most populous Muslim
| country, but are also only a quarter century removed from a
| corrupt authoritarian regime.
|
| They have very little in the way of exported cultural products
| ("The Raid" films?), are much worse in sports than would be
| expected based on population, spend relatively little on their
| military and don't do much in the way of regional power
| projection, and are growing economically but not remarkably, so
| there just aren't that many avenues for them to make
| international news.
| veeti wrote:
| The only time I see Indonesia in the news is when some
| unfortunate soul gets swallowed by a giant snake:
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/python-kills-woman-swallowed-
| in...
|
| Many such cases.
| fnikacevic wrote:
| The island of Bali has outsized impact from all the tourism.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Yeah and... articles like these are reminders that cultural
| representation as a concept in general is kind of broken.
| There's no website which topic distribution follows actual
| distribution of population of the world[1].
|
| 1:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_per...
| awongh wrote:
| I always thought it was interesting that, I guess due to Arab
| racism, it's also not very represented in the community of
| Islam.
|
| Like, Indonesia (and together with Malaysia) makes up a really
| significant portion of all muslims. As an outsider it still
| seems like there isn't much cultural overlap- which seems like,
| even if Indonesian culture wouldn't reach Europe or the USA, at
| least it would reach to the middle east / north africa because
| of the the religious link.
|
| I could have drawn some parallels between Catholics and South
| America, but there's already two Popes that have Latin American
| roots.
| mcmoor wrote:
| At least in the two holy cities itself, Indonesia has quite
| significant pull. Because our pilgrims heavily outnumber lots
| of other nations. To the point where sellers around the city
| usually knows a least a word or two of Indonesian.
| Squealer2642 wrote:
| I think it's just because there aren't large immigrant
| communities in Western countries besides Australia and the
| Netherlands.
| yen223 wrote:
| I feel the same way about China tbh
|
| Like how many of you can name a Chinese movie or pop star or TV
| show?
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| I dunno, I would think AT LEAST Jackie Chan is a household
| name due to the Rush Hour movies, and for anyone who grew up
| watching Hong Kong action flicks, they'd probably also know
| Jet Li at least, and Donnie Yen, Michelle Yeoh, and maybe
| Bolo Yeung and Sammo Hung too.
| fragmede wrote:
| Don't forget Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat, Maggie
| Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh, Donnie
| Yen, Wu Jing, Michelle Yeoh, Simu Liu, Donnie Yen, Jason
| Tobin, Olivia Cheng, Dianne Doan,
|
| Lucy Liu isn't famous in China but she is in the US.
|
| Not Chinese but recognizable because of HBO's The Warrior:
| Andrew Koji, Hoon Lee, Joe Taslim
|
| (I cheated, my parents are from Hong Kong.)
| yen223 wrote:
| Not sure if I'm being whooshed here, but a large chunk of
| those people are not from China.
|
| Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian
|
| Bruce Lee is American, baby
|
| A lot of the others are Hong Kong celebrities, from
| before Hong Kong was returned to China
|
| (Probably should've specified Chinese as people from
| China, specifically the mainland)
| fragmede wrote:
| Yeah, Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco and had a US
| passport, but he grew up in Hong Kong. Point is, Chinese
| diaspora exists and can be seen for those who want to
| look. Projecting a viewpoint that no one knows about
| China or Chinese people because you don't want to think
| they do, so you feel slighted, and can then rage against
| that; it just seems kind of hollow to me.
| yen223 wrote:
| I was hoping to talk more about (Mainland) China being
| uniquely bad at exporting pop culture, especially when
| compared to the success of Hong Kong, and to a lesser
| extent, Taiwanese pop culture.
|
| The fact that nearly all celebs you mentioned were famous
| from HK film seems to at least confirm that.
| aurareturn wrote:
| The west deliberately blocks Chinese media.
|
| In asia, China's culture is far more prevalent and gaining
| quickly.
| yen223 wrote:
| Japan and Korea, yes. China, not really.
|
| Unless you want to include Hong Kong, but even then
| aurareturn wrote:
| Random Chinese culture routinely comes up on my IG reel.
| an0malous wrote:
| What Chinese media is blocked in the west? First time I'm
| hearing of this
| autoexec wrote:
| Big Fish & Begonia was a good film that got a wide release in
| the west. Flavors of Youth is on netflix. Ne Zha was too I
| think. In animation at least they do better than a lot of
| countries. Mojin: The Lost Legend is the only live action
| movie I can remember seeing off the top of my head though.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The only ones I can name are from Hong Kong before the
| handover, off the top of my head: Wong Kar-wei, Jackie Chan,
| John Woo, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung.
|
| Authoritarian cultures aren't known for freedom of expression
| so it makes sense there's little cultural export. The same
| thing applies to Islamic countries, the iconoclastic bent
| kinda puts a damper on visual art.
| wraptile wrote:
| Opression makes it much harder to export culture. See also
| China.
| decimalenough wrote:
| 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 language barrier. Hotels are incredible value, you can
| get top tier branded five stars for $100. Shopping for locally
| produced clothes etc is stupidly cheap. Indonesian food is
| amazing, there's so much more to it than nasi goreng, and you can
| find great Japanese, Italian, etc too; these are comparatively
| expensive but lunch at the Italian place in the Ritz-Carlton was
| under $10. The nightlife scene is _wild_ , although you need to
| make local friends to really get into it. And it's reasonably
| safe, violent crime is basically unknown and I never had problems
| with pickpockets (although they do exist) or scammers.
|
| I think Jakarta's biggest problems are lack of marketing and top
| tier obvious attractions. Bangkok has royal palaces and temples
| galore plus a wild reputation for go-go bars etc, Jakarta does
| not, so nobody even considers it as a vacation destination.
| duffyjp wrote:
| 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 million loan words you already know.
|
| Jakarta is definitely for the adventurous though, and you had
| better have an iron stomach.
| mmooss wrote:
| How did the language end up with a Latin alphabet?
| itake wrote:
| Same as Vietnam: No dominate written language at the time
| of European Colonialization.
| rafram wrote:
| Sort of. Indonesian had Jawi, based on the Arabic script.
| People in today's Vietnam mostly wrote in Chinese AFAIK.
| Those methods of writing were dominant among the people
| who could write. But the populations were mostly
| illiterate, so it was easy for colonial administrators to
| supplant the existing writing systems with Latin as they
| introduced European-style schooling.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| How well do Chinese characters mesh with Vietnamese?
|
| I mean I note that there are some _Chinese languages_ ,
| with millions of speakers, where the largest written text
| they have is a bible written in a Roman script. If those
| are a challenge surely Vietnamese must be as well.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Like this -
| https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%E1%BB%AF_N%C3%B4m
| wisty wrote:
| Like Korean and Japanese it has a different grammar and
| vocabulary. Japanese added a bunch other characters and
| Korean just made up a new (phonetic) script.
| realusername wrote:
| > How well do Chinese characters mesh with Vietnamese?
|
| Not very well. The old vietnamese script with Chinese
| characters had a lot of custom additions not in Chinese
| to make it work. It clearly was ducktaped.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| There are non-Chinese languages in China that use Chinese
| characters phonetically for writing. Most of these are
| newer though, since the 1950s.
| realusername wrote:
| That was kind of like that with vietnamese, a mix of
| phonetic-only characters, fully custom characters and
| standard ones all blend together, it's quite a mess. I
| doubt any Chinese speaker can understand that.
|
| The colonial administration didn't have to push too hard
| to make people switch, the customized chinese script
| wasn't very popular.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Chinese speakers won't understand Zhuang, Yi, or Bai as
| well. Latinization would probably be more effective, but
| China would lose some face. They even re-popularized an
| old form of Uighur script for Mongolian (while Mongolians
| in outer Mongolia/Russia use Cyrillic).
| eaksa wrote:
| Despite its name, Jawi wasn't used all that much in Java
| - it had always been more popular in the Malay peninsula.
| Java, as with many parts of Indonesia, used Brahmic
| abugidas descended from the Pallava script of Southern
| India (just like the Thai and Khmer scripts). Latin was
| chosen to write the Indonesian language for the same
| reason Malay was chosen as the language's base: it was a
| politically neutral choice to unite a diverse
| archipelago.
| faizmokh wrote:
| Jawi is also not popular nowadays among the malaysian
| malays.
|
| Every now and then it will pop up in the news due to
| politicians using it as a tool to cause racial divide.
| mc32 wrote:
| Vietnam adopted the Latin alphabet from a missionary of
| some sort a couple of centuries before they were
| colonized by France --at the time Vietnam was
| decolonizing from China. The French made some
| modifications to how the alphabet was used to represent
| their phonemes.
| dboreham wrote:
| Btw, after a couple of days being super-confused in
| Thailand I reverse-engineered this history from signs in
| English I kept seeing that in no way matched the Thai
| pronunciation. Finally the penny dropped that whoever had
| come up with the "English" phonetic spelling of Thai
| words, was not an English speaker.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > 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.
| xvedejas wrote:
| Another factor is that literacy rates were very low
| before colonization, in Vietnam to read or write using
| Chinese characters was never a broadly known skill
| (outside of the elite). This is a pretty big contrast to
| Japan, which had double-digit rates of literacy during
| the same era.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| One word: Colonization
| csomar wrote:
| Malay culture adopted Arabic alphabet without
| colonization. I think colonization had less to do with it
| and more with the fact that the Alphabet is better and
| more practical. Same thing with modern numbers.
| boxed wrote:
| > Malay culture adopted Arabic alphabet without
| colonization
|
| Is that just because you define "colonization" as "by
| western countries"?
| defrost wrote:
| Do you have evidence that Malaysia was "colonized" by
| Arabs?
|
| There is evidence that Parameswara converted to Islam
| following his infatuation with and marriage to a girl
| from the Samudera Pasai Sultanate.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameswara_of_Malacca
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samudera_Pasai_Sultanate
| hearsathought wrote:
| > There is evidence that Parameswara converted to Islam
| following his infatuation with and marriage to a girl
| from the Samudera Pasai Sultanate.
|
| Doesn't that seem like the silliest thing you ever read?
| When the infatuation ended ( like all infatuations do ),
| did he convert back? The only thing royals are infatuated
| with is wealth and power. If anything, don't you think
| the guy converted to get preferable treatment from the
| arab traders or get special access to the arab trading
| network? There is more to the story for sure. But I'm not
| buying that fanciful story.
| csomar wrote:
| No. But Arabs didn't colonize the Malay islands. They
| just adopted Islam from their internal politics. Not sure
| why this triggered you, pretty much _everybody_ is a
| colonizer.
| csomar wrote:
| The same way the latin world ended up with a Latin
| Alphabet. It's more practical and they never developed
| their own. Malaysia, for example, has Jawi which is the
| Arabic alphabet of the their language. The short answer:
| the language never developed an "alphabet" and thus adopted
| one.
| hearsathought wrote:
| The dutch colonization of indonesia started in the 1600s
| and ended in 1949. So plenty of time for the locals,
| especially the elites, to learn dutch and the alphabet.
| asmosoinio wrote:
| > ...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.
| Squealer2642 wrote:
| Both are Austronesian languages
| duffyjp wrote:
| I've never studied it, but my understanding is that like
| Japanese, Tagalog has the pitched/stressed thing going on.
| My wife is Japanese and holy cow I can't tell the
| difference. Bridge or Chopstick? No idea, they sound
| exactly the same to my ears...
|
| I'm pretty fluent, but my pronunciation was as good as it's
| gonna get like 10 years ago which is a frustration.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| In Japan/ese, the pitch/stress thing is overrated, and so
| are regional language differences. When natives point it
| out to me, it strikes me a little more than cultural
| gatekeeping. Linguistic context matters much more. How
| often are you listening to your own native language and
| you are confused by two words that sounds similar (like
| 'hashi' in Japanese for bridge/chopsticks)? Almost never.
| Advice: Ignore it when natives that criticise your
| pronunciation. Ask them how is their German or Thai is...
| and they will freeze with shame.
|
| Where I come from, to criticise a non-native speakers
| accent or small grammatical errors (that do not impact
| the meaning) is a not-so-subtle form of discrimination.
| As a result, I never do it. (To criticise myself, it
| tooks many, many years to see this about my home culture
| and stop doing it myself.) Still, many people ask me:
| "Hey, can you correct my <language X> when I speak it?"
| "Sure!" (but I never do.)
| Muromec wrote:
| >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.
| BlaDeKke wrote:
| Since the war, we have a lot of Ukrainians at our Flemish
| school. We just make it work, no time for gatekeeping.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > We just make it work, no time for gatekeeping.
|
| This is nice to hear. A real win.
|
| Real question (because it took me, sadly, too long to
| learn it as an adult): Why don't they gatekeep? Do you
| think there is compassion for those who fled war in
| Ukraine, so people are more forgiving about linguistic
| and cultural differences?
| kjs3 wrote:
| Does "I'm just not going to be a dick to these people for
| ultimately trivial reasons" really need an explanatory
| framework in your world?
| jack_tripper wrote:
| 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.
| michaelscott wrote:
| You're conflating 2 issues here: judgement of adult
| attempts at a new language and the time required to learn
| it. The first is just a cultural thing, although it is
| sometimes valid for understanding a speaker (cases in
| Slavic languages, pronunciation in a homonym-heavy
| language like French, tones in Asian languages). Problem
| is that it's oftentimes more "cultural" than "valid"
| critique, which helps no one.
|
| The second problem is more practical and it's not the
| only difference between child and adult speakers; the
| vocabulary required in most day-to-day settings for a
| child is considerably easier to master than the adult
| equivalent, regardless of language (describing symptoms
| to your doctor or getting through a bank or tax
| appointment will be much more difficult than describing
| the weather or what you want for lunch). Adults in
| general are just as good as children at learning new
| languages, it's just that life has different requirements
| from that age group.
|
| Edit: that said, I actually am agreeing with your general
| sentiment
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Sure some few adults can learn languages as fast as kids,
| but you completely missed my main points around
| gatekeeping that language skills always has on adults and
| less so on kids.
|
| Because statements like the original I was replying to of
| "no time for gatekeeping" are simply not true, but more
| like the poster doesn't notice it because he (or his
| kids) are not affected by that gatekeeping.
| erincandescent wrote:
| > Sure some few adults can learn languages as fast as
| kids, but you completely missed my main points around
| gatekeeping that language skills always has on adults and
| less so on kids.
|
| Adults in general are actually way faster at learning
| languages than kids if you control for time actually
| spent learning the language, but generally adults are
| required to fit language learning in around a full time
| job (and are also full of shame/embarrassment)
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Can't concur. As a kid I learned foreign languages
| effortlessly, compared to now as an expat. And every
| other expat here my age shares the same experiences,
| where their 8 year old already speak the host country's
| language better than they do.
| somenameforme wrote:
| As another expat, I'd concur with him, with an asterisk.
| The thing is - your kids are _surrounded_ by the language
| nonstop. Depending on your situation it may be spoken at
| school, certainly spoken by some of their friends,
| teachers, and so on endlessly. But "you" (speaking in
| generalities of expats and not necessarily literally
| you)? Unless you happen to have a local wife, then you
| probably speak it extremely rarely, there's a reasonable
| chance you can't even read it if it's non-latin, and
| there's no real need to move beyond that.
|
| Living in one country for a rather long time, my fluency
| was basically non-existent beyond simple greetings,
| shopping/eating, and other basic necessities. By contrast
| somewhat recently I've taken a major interest in another
| language, one that's generally considered extremely
| difficult, and I've reached at least basic fluency in
| about 3 years. The difference? I immersed myself in the
| other language, my music playlist is overwhelmingly in
| that language, I've watched endless series and movies in
| that language, I've made efforts to read books in the
| other language, and any time I find another speaker I
| make sure to use the opportunity to talk with him in that
| language, and so on. If I was in a country where it was
| the native language, then I'd probably be near fluent by
| now.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Says it's overrated and non semantic... on authority of
| what? Being foreign to it and not knowing the language,
| naturally
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I swear there must an LLM that posts these types of
| replies. No matter what anyone says about Japan language
| or culture, someone will pop into the conversation with
| "acckkkshually...".
|
| I can tell you from (thousands of) first hand experiences
| watching non-naive speakers of Japanese for many years:
| It doesn't matter _nearly_ as much as locals want you to
| think it matters. Sure, the homophone thing is real, but
| Japanese people adapt their style of speaking depending
| upon the audience. (Japanese language and culture is
| highly context sensitive.) I hear it often when people
| pick and choose their words carefully in an attempt to
| reduce confusion around homophones. As a non-native
| speaker, when I am trying to use a relatively rare term
| that the speaker doesn 't expect me to know, I slow down,
| use my hands a bit, and toss out some synonyms or brief
| explanation of the term I am trying to say. On the whole,
| Japanese people are excellent listeners, so it works
| pretty well.
|
| What matters more: Japan has very little linguistic
| diversity for the size of its nation. Plus, it is an
| island. My theory (empirically observed): This makes them
| less able to adapt to non-native speakers. When you try
| to speak a type of Chinese (there are so many) to a
| native speaker from mainland China... their brain is
| automatically wired to heavy accents and different word
| choices, because their country is so linguistically
| diverse. As a result, when learning a Chinese language,
| it is pretty easy to speak with locals. In Japan: It is
| way harder. Mainland Chinese people really make an effort
| to understand you. It's no different than a tourist from
| a different region speaking to locals with a heavy accent
| ... or a different type of Chinese.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| I speak Japanese and am fully aware of the dynamic you
| describe, having experienced it many times, first hand.
| I've also been truly misunderstood as a result of the
| wrong use of accent, difference in dialect, etc.
|
| This all being said, after this interaction, I imagine
| you would have trouble in any country, with any language,
| because you seem quite insufferable and boorish.
| gosub100 wrote:
| People are allowed to disagree with you. Your caricature
| of them doesn't add to the conversation.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| 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)
| adrian_b wrote:
| I think that you are right that your problem must have
| been caused more by the Chinese tones than by any other
| characteristic of Chinese, and perhaps also from some of
| their consonants that do not have a straightforward
| English equivalent.
|
| On the other hand, the Japanese pronunciation is one of
| the easiest in the world to learn, even taking into
| account the subtleties of pitch.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| You might have been trying too hard with tones and the
| stilted speech didn't help with understanding. My first
| trip to China before I spoke Chinese well enough...the
| Beijing taxi drivers, you needed to speak more naturally
| for them to get you, not more correctly. You were better
| off talking like a farmer than trying to talk like a
| broadcaster.
| Greduan wrote:
| Well imagine somebody was talking about "bass" the fish,
| in a context of "bass" the instrument. If they pronounced
| it like the fish, certainly for a moment your language
| processing would stop, figure it out, fill in the gap,
| and continue.
|
| Every time the wrong pitch accent is used, a similar
| process takes place. Especially in highly complex
| conversations, where a lot of processing power is going
| towards the semantics itself, and hopefully the person
| shouldn't have to worry about figuring out which word the
| other person is saying.
|
| It's unclear if you yourself have native-level (or close
| to) pitch accent yourself. But if you don't, how can you
| know whether it's actually important or not?
| roughly wrote:
| Just remember, you can tune an instrument, but you can't
| tuna fish.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can_Tune_a_Piano,_but_
| You_...> (originally by Groucho Marx:
| <https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kevin-cronin-reo-
| speedwagon-...>).
|
| Or perhaps more HN-appropriate:
| <https://unixhistory.livejournal.com/1808.html>.
| saltcured wrote:
| Eh, in a discussion about homophones, homonyms, and
| ambiguity, I prefer the variant, "you can tune a bass,
| but you can tuna fish".
|
| Right up there with "fruit flies like a banana, but time
| flies like an arrow".
| bamboozled wrote:
| Strong agree
| danielscrubs wrote:
| I correct my kids when they do mistakes, how else would
| they improve?
|
| Calling people racist when they try to be helpful might
| say more about you than them.
|
| I mean what I say and say what I mean is also something
| worth striving for.
| omaewabaka wrote:
| As a Japanese, I will mention that I've seen Japanese
| people correct each other on this, both in private and in
| public. Its because we might get the meaning by context,
| but if you pronounce it wrong, it sounds _very_ strange
| in that context where its clearly wrong... To default to
| an assumption that this is due to racism / cultural
| gatekeeping says a whole lot about your world view and
| perception about Japanese people and culture than it does
| my people.
|
| For example, examine your own words when you say that
| where you come from its a subtle form of discrimination.
| Well, you are saying it yourself that an action is deemed
| discriminatory according to the standards of your own
| culture, not to the standards of the other culture. You
| realize that could be cultural misunderstanding? There is
| a word for evaluating another culture by the standards of
| one's own culture: ethnocentrism.
|
| If you are actually living in Japan, you should self-
| reflect a bit about what problems you face that you
| attribute subconsciously in your head to malicious
| intent, rather than cultural misunderstanding.
|
| Anyways, I'm often disappointed by the comment section on
| this website when its anything about Japanese people.
| This is just another reminder for me to avoid the
| comments.
| tanjtanjtanj wrote:
| I mean there are widely spoken regional dialects that
| make no pitch distinction between the pronounciation of
| Qiao and Zhu . You may get looked down on for not
| speaking the Queen's English (I mean standard Tokyo
| Japanese) but you are still speaking fully correct
| Japanese.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Japanese pitch accent actually varies across regions.
| Some have no pitch accent at all! I think this shows that
| it's not very important unless you want to sound like a
| native speaker. I never bothered to learn the "standard"
| pitch accents but I tend to imitate the Kansai pitch
| accent of my wife :)
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Kagoshima where there is no pitch accent is like a
| different language entirely though, and nearly
| unintelligible
| numpad0 wrote:
| Native Kyushu conversations are literally unintelligible
| to me as a Japanese speaker. There are actually numerous
| Japanese dialects and accents that aren't so mutually
| intelligible, though of course post-TV generations
| understand TV Japanese.
|
| That's kind of a secret to how CJK languages are each
| supposedly being a unique linguistic isolates: the rest
| of the families are hiding in the "dialects".
| csomar wrote:
| Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines share a lot
| (language, food, genetics and customs). Look up
| Austronesian people. They do exist as minorities in
| Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. After a while (4 years so
| far in SEA), you get to notice them in these countries
| among the masses.
| adrian_b wrote:
| They are both Austronesian languages (also related to the
| Polynesian languages), so the similarity is not due to
| coincidence. In SEA there are also other completely
| unrelated language families besides Austronesian, e.g. the
| Thai language and the Khmer language belong to different
| language families with no relationships to Austronesian
| languages, like Malaysian (besides recent linguistic
| borrowings between neighbors).
|
| All Austronesian languages are simple phonetically. Also
| the phonetic simplicity of Japanese is likely to have been
| caused by an Austronesian substrate related to that of the
| aborigine Taiwanese people.
| wk_end wrote:
| > Also the phonetic simplicity of Japanese is likely to
| have been caused by an Austronesian substrate related to
| that of the aborigine Taiwanese people.
|
| That's being asserted with too much confidence, I think.
| While I was aware some kind of Austronesian connection
| has been suggested, as far as I know there's zero actual
| consensus among linguists on any kind of relationship
| between Japanese and any other language family. Like,
| there's theories relating Japanese to everything from
| Korean to Turkish to Greek floating around - but nothing
| to my knowledge that we should really be describing as
| "likely" at the point, even a connection with the
| grammatically extremely similar Korean.
|
| Now that said, I don't know a lot about the Austronesian
| languages or this particular hypothesis. I did find an
| article about a possible Austronesian substratum ("Does
| Japanese have an Austronesian stratum?" by Ann Kumar),
| but it seemed mostly preoccupied with drawing that
| connection through similarities in vocabulary rather than
| phonology. Do you have pointers to scholarly sources on
| the subject?
| adrian_b wrote:
| Japanese is likely to have been a hybrid language,
| somewhat similar with many European languages that had
| both a substrate and a superstrate, e.g. a Romance
| language like French had a Celtic substrate and a
| Germanic superstrate.
|
| However, in the case of such European languages the 3
| combined languages were not radically different, but they
| belonged to the same great language family, only to
| different branches. For Japanese, its sources have come
| from completely unrelated language families, which is the
| probable cause of the difficulties in determining the
| affinities of Japanese.
|
| The grammar of Japanese is very similar to its Western
| neighbor, i.e. Korean, while its phonology is very
| similar to its Southern neighbor, i.e. the Austronesian
| languages of Ancient Taiwan and Philippines.
|
| On the other hand, for the vocabulary of native Japanese,
| before it incorporated the huge amount of borrowings from
| Chinese, it has been more difficult to find relationships
| with other languages. Besides the Southern and Western
| influences, Japanese was also affected by a Northern
| influence, from people related to Ainu. As there are no
| old enough recorded sources about languages related to
| Ainu, it is possible that many of the words that do not
| appear to have a Southern or Western source may have come
| from a Northern contribution to the Japanese language.
|
| I did not find any linguistic publication that does an
| adequate analysis of the relationships of Japanese with
| other languages. To be fair, such an analysis would
| require a huge amount of work, because unlike for Indo-
| European and Afro-Asiatic languages, where a large amount
| of texts have been preserved from several millennia ago,
| when the evolution of the languages had not changed most
| words so much as to make their correspondences in related
| languages unrecognizable, for Japanese many of the
| languages related to those which have contributed to the
| formation of Japanese have probably disappeared before
| leaving any written records. A credible analysis of the
| possible relationships of Japanese would require the
| compilation of a great amount of information about poorly
| documented languages, in order to try to reconstruct
| their earlier stages, where similarities with Old
| Japanese could be identified.
|
| Korean has old written records, but only about as old as
| Japanese itself, so those are not very helpful to
| reconstruct the stage from many centuries before, which
| could have provided a component of Japanese. A language
| related to Korean appears to have contributed to
| Japanese, but only as a late superstrate that has applied
| a new grammar on the vocabulary inherited from the
| previous inhabitants of the islands. The language
| providing this superstrate was probably the language of
| the Yayoi people, who immigrated in Japan more than two
| thousand years ago.
|
| For the Southern and Northern languages that could have
| contributed to the vocabulary and phonology of the
| language of Japan before the Yayoi immigration, there are
| extremely low chances of becoming able to reconstruct
| them as they were a few millennia ago, so it is unlikely
| that the origin of Japanese will ever be known with
| certainty.
|
| Still, the fact that the languages that share features
| with Japanese are exactly its former neighbors in the 3
| directions besides the Ocean (from before Taiwan became
| Chinese), is not surprising at all, but it is exactly
| what would be expected. What are not known are the
| details of what exactly each source has contributed and
| when did this happen.
| celloductor wrote:
| most SEA languages are similar btw
| Loughla wrote:
| >Jakarta is definitely for the adventurous though, and you
| had better have an iron stomach.
|
| I love, love, loved backpacking across quite a bit of
| southeast Asia. I did not like the massive gastrointestinal
| problems nearly the entire time though.
|
| I spent big money on four things for that trip: the flight,
| shoes, backpack, and toilet paper. I would've killed and
| eaten someone to get my hands in alcohol free wet wipes.
| RankingMember wrote:
| It'd be nice if there was some way to "acclimate" your gut
| prior to a trip like that.
| ipince wrote:
| > which I can't say about any other SEA language
|
| maybe this doesn't qualify as "south east asian", but Korean
| is very easy to learn how to read too. It's not latin
| alphabet, but you only need to learn 20 symbols, and then
| everything is phonetic! you can have a lot of fun "reading"
| all the signs after you study a bit on the plane. Not as many
| loan words though
| jasonthorsness wrote:
| What is the air quality like to actually breathe in your
| experience? I have noticed Jakarta on lists of poor AQI and it
| doesn't look great [1] but I think the AQI number is kind of an
| abstraction.
|
| [1]
| https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/indonesia/jakarta/jakarta/hi...
| itake wrote:
| Air quality is terrible. AQI does not lie. It's even worse
| when you're sitting on the back of a motorbike 6ft away from
| 10 other gas powered bikes.
|
| There is slow adoption of electric vehicles, but still very
| low adoption rate (like less than 10% of motorbikes).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Air quality is terrible. AQI does not lie.
|
| Heh. To get a sense of what the page's numbers might mean,
| I checked on Kaohsiung, where you can _taste_ gasoline in
| the air as you walk down the street.
|
| And hey, reported air quality in Kaohsiung is abysmal, so
| that checks out. Jakarta even looks good by comparison.
|
| https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/taiwan/kaohsiung/kaohsiung
|
| https://www.aqi.in/us/dashboard/indonesia/jakarta/jakarta
|
| AQI appears to have Jakarta pegged at an average "66",
| which looks pretty respectable for the region. They seem to
| have much more carbon monoxide than Kaohsiung or Shanghai,
| but much less fine particulate.
| mcmoor wrote:
| Hmm it's a bit surprising. Usually when I checked, it'll
| never be under 100. Maybe the current rainy season helps?
| apelapan wrote:
| I don't feel that AQI in reasonably normal ranges
| corresponds at all to the subjective experience of how nice
| the air feels to breathe.
|
| The best breathing I've done was in Mumbai. Felt like a
| silk blanket both in the lungs and on the skin. I'm sure it
| would be bad for me if I stayed there a few decades, but it
| didnt feel bad at all when visiting.
| ubercow13 wrote:
| I found it probably the worst of anywhere I've ever been, you
| can taste it and just being outside slightly burns the back
| of your throat. I still really like visiting though.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I'm wondering whether they have a large
| retro computing market?
| veeti wrote:
| I'll just chime in that Chinatown in Glodok might have been
| that place a couple decades ago, but seemed quite deserted
| now :/ There's still some shops around though.
| itake wrote:
| 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 the bottom of SEA food
| culture. MY has wayyy better food (both in quality and
| diversity).
| darkwater wrote:
| > Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food
| culture. MY has wayyy better food (both in quality and
| diversity).
|
| Agreed! Malaysia is really underrated, or at least it was by
| me. Now it's one of my favorite spots in the world, food is
| great (not as Thai's but comes close), wonderful sea,
| wonderful jungle, Kuala Lumpur is becoming a really nice city
| and CoL is value for money.
| itake wrote:
| The teh tarik tea (served in a glass mug! paper cups don't
| count) is my favorite drink right now.
|
| Also Malaysian Indian food is one of my favorite foods
| (especially the sweet roti).
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| > Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food culture
|
| I take it you haven't been to Burma / Myanmar
| itake wrote:
| haha, I have not.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| ???
|
| Burmese food is absolutely delicious. Burma Love in SF,
| Rangoon Bistro or Burma Joy in Portland. They're some of my
| favorite restaurants.
| phainopepla2 wrote:
| Burmese food in the US is very different from the food
| you encounter in the country itself.
| izolate wrote:
| 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.
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| Not sure if it's still there, but Burma Super Star is the
| one I go to and it's good.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Those restaurants had none of the food I ate in Burma
| EB-Barrington wrote:
| Nice. I'm an ex-tour guide, and had many jovial discussions
| with a colleague who toured Myanmar and LOVED the food - he
| knew I thought it was pretty average, at best.
|
| Of course, that crazy guy didn't really like Thai food...
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| Having been to both Indonesia and Myanmar, I can say
| confidently Burmese food is much better. The one exception
| is the dessert Martabak you can get in Java is to die for.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Lived in SE Asia for well over 15 years, and Burmese food
| is great.
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| Rain, noise, traffic... welcome to SEA
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The regional abbreviation, or the airport code?
|
| .... what? Either works?
| mandolingual wrote:
| Seattle's not really known for noise. The opposite, if
| anything. Rain (caveat it's not the rain it's the dark
| and it's mostly mizzle blah blah blah) and traffic
| though, sure.
| dboreham wrote:
| And homeless drug addicts.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I've never been there, but the US version of the tv
| series The Killing is so great and it sure gives a grim
| impression of the weather.
|
| Not that serial killers are any better on a nice day in
| pleasant weather.
| paxys wrote:
| Man if you think Seattle has too much noise and traffic you
| should stay away from basically every other mid-large sized
| city anywhere in the world.
| Nition wrote:
| I presume they mean South East Asia.
| askvictor wrote:
| Bangkok doesn't have nearly the noise issues of Jakarta;
| the traffic proceeds without every vehicle beeping most of
| the time in Bangkok. Also no prayer calls.
| Affric wrote:
| Putting Indonesian below Filipino food is quite something.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| I'll see anything you get in Indonesia, and raise you
| Balut... Or Betamax... or Helmet. Their national dish was
| designed to hide the aroma of rotten meat, FFS.
| Affric wrote:
| lol... try being in poultry. Every time you go to the
| Phillipines it's: all Balut, all the time.
| saagarjha wrote:
| To be fair, this describes any sort of preserved or
| "reuse" food: toast, pickle, ...
| itake wrote:
| True. I forgot about Filipino food. Filipino bbq pig was
| good tho
| kabes wrote:
| Made me remember again how disappointed I was (food-wise)
| that time I went backpacking in the Philippines after
| backpacking in Thailand. Most days we had to choose between
| dry rice with tasteless fried chicken, or tasteless fried
| chicken with dry rice.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Jakarta has a noise problem.
|
| I offer a practical template: <Large city in developing
| country X> 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.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| This is an appeal to normality fallacy, just because
| something is normal doesn't mean it's good, or in this case
| that it doesn't disrupt sleep.
| itake wrote:
| U.S. cities have noise laws.
|
| I don't think Tokyo is considered loud.
|
| Yes, temples blasting prayers.
| rester324 wrote:
| I can tell you that Tokyo is very loud. Constant road
| traffic noise everywhere, drunk people singing on the
| streets, pointless warnings from the local municipal
| office on the public alert system, noisy street
| advertisements, constant announcements in train stations,
| bousouzoku gangs constantly revving their bikes in silent
| neighborhoods every night, flight traffic noise, railroad
| noise of the trains passing, level crossing barriers
| constantly ding-donging, etc
| mc3301 wrote:
| noisy street advertisements.. and jingles... shops of all
| shapes and sizes blaring music...
| pezezin wrote:
| I live in Japan and this is something that I will never
| get used to. Yes, the people are quiet, but shops are
| ridiculously loud. Go to any supermarket and there are
| seven different jingles playing in parallel! Honestly, I
| don't understand how the employees don't go crazy.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Tokyo isn't loud at all. Go 2-3 blocks from any major
| street and they are practically silent.
|
| > drunk people singing on the streets
|
| never seen this
|
| > bousouzoku gangs constantly revving their bikes in
| silent neighborhoods every night
|
| seen this maybe twice in 25 years
|
| > flight traffic noise
|
| do you live next to the airport? this is not a thing
| relatively to any other major city I've lived in
|
| > railroad noise of the trains passing, level crossing
| barriers constantly ding-donging
|
| This is only a thing if you live next to a track which is
| like 1% of housing
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Neither the US, nor Japan are considered developing
| countries. I'm confused by your comment.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Cars and mopets have a noise problem not cities.
|
| But I guess the mosque doesn't help.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Catholic churches ring bells twice a day. It's less then
| mosques that do their call 5 times a day both as non-
| religious person both are disappointing to me.
| cholantesh wrote:
| >Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food
| culture. MY has wayyy better food (both in quality and
| diversity).
|
| I won't speak for the quality but this seems like an
| extremely dubious statement. Malay cuisine is certainly
| diverse, owing to settled migrant populations from other
| parts of Asia, but they don't have the dizzying array of
| indigenous cuisines on offer in Indonesia, many of which
| aren't readily available in Java.
| rd07 wrote:
| A little tip for your next visit to Jakarta :
|
| - Indonesia is a tropical country, and Jakarta is in the
| vicinity of the sea, so depending on the month of year, it
| can rain anytime on the day. So, if you are not comfortable
| with rain, always use a taxi/grab/gocar to go around.
|
| - If you are pressed for time, I suggest you use airport
| train to go to the airport. At least you won't get stuck on
| traffic.
|
| - About the noise problem, I think it won't be a problem if
| you sleep in a tall building. The last time I go there, I
| sleep in a relatively good hotel and deliberately choose the
| higher floor. And the noise doesn't become a problem for me.
|
| Hope this help and you can get a nicer experience on your
| next visit
| csomar wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I guess people perceive this very differently. One sees it as
| an adventure while another one sees it as a hustle. Jakarta
| is a hustle. Some people like it and make them feel alive. If
| you don't enjoy it, it'll make you miserable.
|
| > Also, Indonesian food IMHO is at the bottom of SEA food
| culture.
|
| I agree. I hate the food but Malay food is similar. What
| Malaysia has is two other major races (Chinese and Indians)
| and a strong expat community (ie: Thai, Viet and Japanese)
| that bring lots of food diversity.
| rockskon wrote:
| Shame their water is poison.
| itake wrote:
| and air
| bogota69 wrote:
| 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.
| moneywoes wrote:
| what is the cheapest for a nomad
| itake wrote:
| Vietnam.
|
| source: I've been to almost every country in SEA at least
| 3x. (Brunei was once, never went to Timor-Leste).
|
| Check the forex changes and rent prices if you don't
| believe me.
|
| Harder to factor in is visa costs. Vietnam, you need to
| leave every 90 days. So you need to buy a $25usd visa +
| flights/buses + hotels for 3-5 days while you get your next
| visa. Thailand, you only need to leave every 6mo on the
| DTV.
| exidy wrote:
| Thailand is cracking down on visa runs and people staying
| quasi-permanently on short-stay visas:
| https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visit/thailand-
| step...
| doix wrote:
| The parent mentions the DTV visa which is the opposite of
| the visa-run strategy. Realistically though, if you're a
| "nomad" from a country with a powerful-ish passport you
| can come to Thailand for 60 days, extend once for 30 days
| for a total stay of 90 days. After that you can do a bit
| of a loop between Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos,
| Indonesia, Philippines in whatever order you prefer and
| come back to Thailand in a year. They'll have no problem
| letting you in again.
|
| It's pretty easy to spend a year in SEA without raising
| eyebrows at any border if you're willing to change
| countries somewhat often and don't mind AirAsia flights.
| itake wrote:
| That is basically my life. I've visited almost every
| country in the region this year (+ China and Japan) on a
| tourist visa.
|
| The problem for me personally is this life is stressful
| on relationships, health, and personal productivity.
| Spending a weekend every 1-2 months to deal with travel
| (and arrangements) is exhausting and expensive on
| productivity hours.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _very filthy like New Delhi_
|
| Think you mean _Delhi NCR_? New Delhi is pretty small, and
| mostly houses political and social elite.
| bandrami wrote:
| I love that they put all the diplomats in Chanakyapur which
| would be like Italy putting them on Machiavelli Lane
| darkwater wrote:
| N=1 but my experience with Philippines and Malaysia is
| exactly the opposite.
| itake wrote:
| > 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...
| projectazorian wrote:
| 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.
| decimalenough wrote:
| > _it 's next to the ocean with no significant mountains
| nearby so usually pollution gets blown out to sea._
|
| So is Jakarta, and it's still pretty polluted.
| darrenf wrote:
| > _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._
|
| Malaysia's a pretty decent size country, not a city. Can't
| say as I'd have referred to KL as filthy on any of my visits
| (admittedly only 3 times over the past 12 years). Kuching
| wasn't filthy either.
| thedrexster wrote:
| This is such an odd position to create a burner account to
| argue...
| medstrom wrote:
| If it seems odd, maybe it's not what they're doing.
| decimalenough wrote:
| For me Manila is the uncontested worst city in SEA. All of
| Jakarta's downsides, plus an absolutely horrific airport,
| worse traffic, extremely limited public transport network
| (which doesn't extend at all to the places where most
| business travellers go, namely Makati/BGC), higher crime and
| more violent crime too (lots of guns around), and worse food.
|
| About the only upside is that most people speak some English,
| which is manifestly not the case in Jakarta.
| jeromegv wrote:
| I guess we just have different experience of Manila. In
| most places you would go as a visitor, either tourist or
| business, you're not really likely to see a lot of
| violence. I've been there 10 times over 10 years, and
| really nothing truly bad happened or even seen or heard by
| fellow travellers. I've been harassed by street kids,
| that's about it.
|
| Do people talk that crime exists? For sure. You have to be
| smart, just like any other big city. But I don't see how
| you'd truly put yourself into a dangerous situation.
| There's lots of security everywhere westerners might hang
| out.
|
| Airport has seen lots of improvements recently.
|
| But yes, traffic is horrendous, public transit as well.
| wraptile wrote:
| I'd take Bangkok over Singapore any time of the
| day/month/year. There's still a bit of chaos in Bangkok in
| 2025 but once you spend a few days there and learn how to
| avoid peak traffic hours and areas it's incredibly charming
| and charistmatic city with loads of activities and
| opportunities for all classes of people. Singapore while
| clean is incredibly dull and characterless unless you're a
| billionaire.
| kafkaesque wrote:
| "Learn how to avoid peak traffic hours." Most people living
| in Bangkok cannot do this. Also, a very high percent of the
| time, the Icon Siam area is extremely congested (even on
| weekends). Yes, you can avoid living in or going to that
| area, but there are also very few nice areas in Bangkok in
| general.
|
| Most don't have the luxury of the flexibility to avoid
| certain areas and/or certain peak travel times (which in
| BKK are many throughout the day)
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| This comment is proof that the parent commenter has never
| actually _lived_ in either city.
|
| After a while, a city's 'character', 'charm', and
| 'charisma' all become annoyances. People live, work, go to
| school, file taxes, use transport, not just visit tourist
| attractions. Singapore's quality and efficiency of
| administration is _light-years_ beyond any other country,
| perhaps bar Switzerland. 6.1 million people live in
| Singapore; they 're not all multimillionaires.
| zarzavat wrote:
| It's hard to put into words how unsafe Singapore makes me
| feel.
|
| No, literally, it's hard to put it into words. I feel
| that if I criticize the country, the govt might take
| revenge the next time I visit. (See also: Bald JD Vance)
|
| Metrics aren't everything. Singapore might be on paper a
| great place to live, but it could never be a home.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. Really interesting perspectives
|
| Whats the food like for vegetarians/ vegans?
| zppln wrote:
| Tempeh is an Indonesian staple and from what I understand
| pretty popular with vegans.
| decimalenough wrote:
| If you're strict or allergic, very difficult. Fish sauces and
| pastes like terasi and patis are culinary staples on the
| level of soy sauce and make it into otherwise seemingly
| vegetarian dishes.
|
| If you're willing to flex a bit and just avoid obvious
| meat/fish, you'll survive, there's plenty of tofu, tempeh,
| veg etc. Gado-gado is always veg, nasi/mee goreng, etc.
| mandeepj wrote:
| > you need to make local friends to really get into it
|
| Well, that might sound like an impossible task!! So, just sign
| up for Experiences from any of the leading travel portals.
| They'd get you into any of the local party scenes.
| vladgur wrote:
| This could be a general issue with SE Asia, but one thing that
| was a breath of fresh air for me as I departed Jakarta from my
| Bali trip last year was a thought that I no longer need to
| worry about quality of water being used to wash salad veggies
| or clean my toothbrush with.
|
| Clean safe water from the sink was definitely not something I
| experienced in Bali in 2024 and I had the similar impression in
| Jakart
| lofties wrote:
| I traveled often between Jakarta and Japan in 2018, 2019 and
| 2020. The real breath of fresh air for me was literally the
| fresh air back in Japan. After running around for a week
| through Jakarta, I would inevitably develop a deep cough and
| a clogged nose. That said, the people, the food, and as
| someone else pointed out the nightlife is amazing.
| Yokolos wrote:
| Somebody I know had asthma while she lived in Jakarta. It
| went away when she moved to Europe. I really liked Jakarta,
| but the air quality is one of the reasons why I won't go
| back again.
| esperent wrote:
| Clean safe water from the sink is not something you'll find
| in most of the world, in fact. It's not just SEA.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Safe_drink_tap_water_map..
| ..
|
| So basically it's only safe to drink tap water in western
| countries + Japan, Singapore, Chile, South Korea, and a few
| of the rich Arab countries.
|
| I would argue that even the blue areas here would be speckled
| with lots of non-drinkable areas if you zoomed in, due to old
| lead piping and so on.
| vladgur wrote:
| Any idea why that is? Why is safety of tap water high(I
| hope) priority in some parts of the world and not the
| others?
|
| Is it simply the economics of water purification and
| delivery or something else?
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| Bottled (mineral) water is a big business in Indonesia.
| Not sure if "people" are incentivized to change that
| anytime soon.
| esperent wrote:
| I don't think there's any conspiracy like this. It's just
| economic + (lack of) beauracracy. Installing and
| maintaining a functioning potable water supply across an
| entire country is expensive, but even harder is setting
| and maintaining standards.
| mlrtime wrote:
| It's expensive to control the quality of water from
| source all the way to tap. Just having visible clean
| running water is hard.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The price of clean water is at least an order of
| magnitude less than the price of electricity, but the
| cost of creating a water grid is probably more expensive
| than the electricity grid.
|
| You will notice that many of the countries with unsafe
| tap water also have electricity reliability problems. If
| the economics of electricity don't work, then the
| economics of safe water don't work at all.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Is being an attractive vacation destination necessarily a good
| thing for a city? They're the biggest city, didn't they "win"?
| markdown wrote:
| Sounds wonderful if you're OK with Indonesia's ongoing genocide
| and ethnic cleansing of West Papua.
|
| > Widespread atrocities committed by Indonesian forces have led
| human rights groups to describe the situation as a genocide
| against the indigenous Papuan population. Reports of mass
| killings, forced displacement, and sexual violence are
| extensive and credible. According to a 2007 estimate by scholar
| De R. G. Crocombe, between 100,000 and 300,000 Papuans have
| been killed since Indonesia's occupation began.[19][23] A 2004
| report by Yale Law School argued that the scale and intent of
| Indonesia's actions fall within the legal definition of
| genocide.[24] State violence has targeted women in particular.
| A 2013 and 2017 study by AJAR and the Papuan Women's Working
| Group found that 4 in 10 Papuan women reported suffering state
| abuse,[25] while a 2019 follow-up found similar
| results.[26][27][Note 1][Note 2]
|
| > In 2022, the UN condemned what it described as "shocking
| abuses" committed by the Indonesian state, including the
| killing of children, disappearances, torture, and large-scale
| forced displacement. It called for "urgent and unrestricted
| humanitarian aid to the region."[28] Human Rights Watch (HRW)
| has noted that the Papuan region functions as a de facto police
| state, where peaceful political expression and independence
| advocacy are met with imprisonment and violence.[29] While some
| analysts argue that the conflict is aggravated by a lack of
| state presence in remote areas,[30] the overwhelming trend
| points to systemic state violence and neglect.
|
| > Indonesia continues to block foreign access to the Papuan
| region, citing so-called "safety and security concerns", though
| critics argue this is to suppress international scrutiny of its
| genocidal practices
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict
| sl-1 wrote:
| They also have not prosecuted the earlier genocides they
| made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_
| of_19...
|
| I have personally flagged them as a country non-grata.
| defrost wrote:
| BLACKWATER Angwi fled his mountain home, the
| soldiers, as they burnt his village down, near the border
| line. He's left the card games by the valley fire, the
| stories that his uncle told, the stories old, the spirits
| past. He's seen the land taken away and given to the
| Java men; they've flown them in from distant lands.
| Angwi fears for his people's songs, the nights they danced
| the valley strong; the hunding grounds, steep mountain side.
| slash and burn
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrciT3lXtwE
|
| Tabaran: Recorded Pacific Gold Studios, Rabaul, PNG, July to
| August '88
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX5p1sjvW6s
| paxys wrote:
| So - hot, congested, polluted, no public transit, cheap taxis,
| cheap luxury hotels, amazing food, fun night activities (but
| you'll need to know locals). Other than the no crime claim
| (which I find dubious) you've just described every big city in
| every developing country on the planet.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > lunch at the Italian place in the Ritz-Carlton was under $10
|
| I'm curious, what does a beer or a glass of wine cost?
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| Alcohol is more expensive than other countries, in general.
| rossriley wrote:
| A local beer in a bar will normally be around 60k IDR so
| $3-4, wine is more expensive generally in SEA you'll normally
| pay around 90-100k IDR per glass.
| peyton wrote:
| The nightlife is wildest in SEA but definitely for the bold and
| brave.
| aurareturn wrote:
| Jakarta doesn't need to turn itself into a sex tourism city
| like Bangkok. It shouldn't. Thailand sold its people out to
| make some business and government people rich in my opinion.
|
| I spent a lot of time in Jakarta. It has some serious issues
| like pollution, worst traffic in SEA, unwalkable city, actually
| far more expensive for what you get than other SEA areas. It
| isn't surprising to me that people don't want to travel there
| for holiday. There are far better places for tourism.
| noobermin wrote:
| Why compare Jakarta to Bangkok?
| decimalenough wrote:
| 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.
| rurban wrote:
| What? Jakarta's biggest problem is the rising sea level and the
| sinking ground. Jakarta is one of the fastest sinking cities
| globally. Venice or Miami are nothing compared to this. 40%
| will be gone soon.
|
| https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7a9fa31104334f3db4c01d0...
| pat_erichsen wrote:
| 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
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/
| ghaff wrote:
| Can't speak for the accuracy at the time but great film!
| exidy wrote:
| Maybe 50 years ago, and with Manila standing in for Jakarta.
| mmooss wrote:
| Here's a better link, though maybe it's too late:
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-25/jakarta-overtakes-tok...
|
| It was posted to HN recently (not by me):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46042447
| umanwizard wrote:
| 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?
| asmosoinio wrote:
| 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 a somewhat random definition of a "city"
| and its borders.
| asmosoinio wrote:
| 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.
| ..
| refurb wrote:
| I always find discussion of the world biggest city a bit of a
| pointless exercise considering it's entirely dependent on how
| administrative lines are drawn.
|
| Highly fragmented metro areas are regarded as smaller than
| consolidated metro areas, whereas they might be the same size
| overall.
| paxys wrote:
| These rankings always consider city to be a contiguous metro
| area, regardless of how internal lines are drawn. Otherwise
| most of them wouldn't show up on the list at all. "Los Angeles"
| for example has close to 200 indiviudal cities.
| refurb wrote:
| That is true for this report, based on the methodology
|
| https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve.
| ..
|
| However, instead of an arbitrary administrative definition,
| they used an arbitrary cutoff for population density.
|
| Thus it still comes down to a subjective drawing of lines
| around the city.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| and Los Angeles City would still be on the list
| paxys wrote:
| Los Angeles city has 3.8 million people so no, it is
| nowhere close to a megacity.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Demographics and geography approaches this through the notion
| of "metropolitan statistical area" (MSA) in the US, or
| equivalent concepts elsewhere. An MSA is defined as a
| "geographical region with a relatively high population
| density at its core and close economic ties throughout the
| region".
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area>
|
| Other rough equivalents are _metropolitan areas_ (UK),
| _census metropolitan areas_ (Canada), _functional urban areas
| (FUA)_ (EU), _urban agglomerations_ (India). All of these use
| _functional_ and _behavioural_ characteristics to get around
| simple boundary-demarkation. Urbanisations may even span
| _national_ borders, as with the greater Basel region, Lake
| Constance, or Strasbourg-Ortenau.
| tim333 wrote:
| For Europeans wanting a megacity experience within weekend jaunt
| range, Cairo can be kind of a mad experience, with things like
| the Garbage City https://www.adventuresnsunsets.com/cairo-
| garbage-city/ and cave church
| https://www.egypttoursportal.com/en-gb/blog/egypt-attraction...
| plus the usual pyramids etc. Very cheap Ubers like $8/hr.
| justonceokay wrote:
| Try not to be a woman
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Or gay
| renewiltord wrote:
| Family went together. Mum, dad, and us two boys. '07 or so.
| Very friendly people. But armed soldiers everywhere. Perhaps
| have changed since then.
| fnordian_slip wrote:
| Well, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Crisis_(20
| 11%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.
| tim333 wrote:
| We were in a group with women but solo might be hard work.
| john_minsk wrote:
| What's the problem?
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| Same with India. I heard its absolutely _terrible_ there for
| small groups of women and impossible for solo travelling
| women. The advice I 've heard that can help (a little) is
| wearing fake wedding ring and telling people that you're
| married.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Behind a paywall.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/qoimk
| andreygrehov wrote:
| 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 should de-prioritize
| NYC and encourage companies to invest in smaller cities. This
| would bring jobs to those areas, reduce pressure on NYC, and
| support broader infrastructure development. Apply that approach
| across the country, and suddenly the entire nation can function
| more efficiently instead of relying on a few overloaded hubs.
| elric wrote:
| 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.
| Neil44 wrote:
| 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.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| There's a whole subfield of economics that studies clustering
| in cities ("agglomeration"):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration There
| are lots of benefits.
|
| Also, my own take is that the high rent in NYC is sort of proof
| that the quality of life is high. Or at least, NYC is
| desirable. People are willing to pay a premium to live there,
| which is a strong signal of their preference.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I think it's a situation akin to HOAs where there are
| absolutely people who prefer being in an HOA but it has this
| feedback loop which results in significantly more people
| being in an HOA than would prefer to be just because there
| are limited options and undoing an HOA is higher friction
| than new construction including one.
|
| On one hand this is still preference. They pick to be in a
| city over the other options available. On the other hand the
| other options aren't available because enough people are
| already interested in centralizing life choice options into a
| city and so it just drives that feedback loop over and over
| as more people choose where the option of the day is rather
| than what they'd like. The only thing holding this loop back
| from runaway is large cities eventually seem to have
| population growth fall behind cost of living growth and that
| stops the runaway for the particular city.
|
| Perhaps more simply: the immediate and big picture preference
| often don't align and this misalignment further drives a
| larger gap in those two preferences over time until the cost
| to scale the city finally becomes too high.
| panick21_ wrote:
| There are well known netowrk effects, that happen when
| economists study cities. You can just have each individual bank
| pick some random small town and set up an office there.
|
| That said, I do agree that some amount of distribution of
| infrastructure spending makes a lot of sense. But even if you
| did that, New York itself could raise enough taxes to make its
| own infrastructure without having to tax the rest of the
| nation.
|
| But I would say the US has done this reasonably well, NY is
| nowhere as dominatie any many other places. You have Boston
| with universities and medical, Valley, LA areospace/media, DC
| government and so on and so on.
|
| But economics is pretty clear, hubs are good, getting a place
| with lots of experts togheter improves efficency for everybody.
| And getting enough people together that proper infrastructure
| pays for itself is also good.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| > 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.
|
| What's the benefit to the corporation to do that? They move to
| a more affordable area, which corresponds to less concentrated,
| which corresponds to fewer workforce available, especially if
| the goal is to spend 10 minutes commuting, as you state.
| kopirgan wrote:
| Been going there since mid 90s, not that often recently. Seen it
| change and yet stay the same.. Not cheap anymore but ofc not
| comparing to Singapore.
|
| Issue is getting around.. For a city of that size + national
| capital, public transport options very limited. More like HCM or
| PP than Bangkok or KL.
|
| Comparisons to Thailand inappropriate cos almost no pub culture
| and "entertainment". Even top end hotel bar like Raffles had near
| zero choice for wine etc. And lots more expensive.
|
| Wish them well though.. Nicest people, nice memories.
| zkmon wrote:
| Being a large city should no longer be seen as a positive
| attribute. It just looks like a bigger wound in the middle of a
| forest and natural terrain. Packing millions of people into a
| vast paved area does no good. It socks all life from country due
| to concentration of work and services.
|
| Early human settlements had an objective of collective strength
| against the predators, invaders and shared help for all problem.
| Cities no longer have these goals or characteristics. They exist
| only due to a vicious cycle of jobs and worker availability which
| propel each other because of each other.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Dense cities use up a lot less resources and land than the same
| number of people spread out in smaller cities or suburbs.
| yourusername wrote:
| There's probably a point where that stops scaling. Is there
| any proof a city of 40 million uses less resources per capita
| than a city of 1 million? 40 cities of 1 million seems
| preferable because then you can actually get outside the city
| once in a while without it being 2+ hours of travel.
| rothos wrote:
| > The U.N.'s report highlighted what areas are expected to be the
| next megacities and surpass the 10 million mark, including:
|
| > [...]
|
| > - Hajipur, India.
|
| Estimated population of Hajipur in 2025 is 213k people. Not sure
| why it's on the list. Throws the rest of the article into
| question for me.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Were they going to "move" Jakarta to a new location, because of
| climate change?
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