A Street Market in Jakarta
By
Nina Suwarno
Master's Student of Spatial Planning, Department of
Infrastructure and Regional Planning, Royal Institute of
Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden
ninasuwarno@hotmail.com
Tanah Abang is one of the oldest market in Jakarta, it goes back
as old as almost 300 years old, it began the activity with animal
market. The activities still exist until now, but today's main
business is textile as it's well known as far as the African
countries. Nevertheless, the attraction were not only attract
foreign entrepreneur, but also local entrepreneurs, which means
urban migration. Thus many people from outside Jakarta are trying
their luck in the area and make the area looks like in the
following pictures:
Picture 1: Blue cars are the public transportation, it moves very
slow, around 1km/h. The street vendors are not only using the
sidewalk area but also eating the more than half of the road
width. Thus, the pedestrian are not using their own space but
using the vehicle space instead, forcing the cars to move slower.
This condition happens during business hour, usually it starts at
8 o'clock in the morning until around 4 in the afternoon.
The following picture will shows what they sell:
Picture 2: they sell everything, from used things, to brand new
things. From food to animals, in this picture shows they sell
used eyeglasses next to rifles as well as soft drinks
Picture 3: this is inside the tents, they sell, they sell fruits
until daily needs, such as cloth, shoes, utensils etc, mixed with
fruits as well as food vendors.
Picture 4: in other part of the street, they also sell
firecrackers.
The various type of the public transportation is also an
additional diversity of informal sector, as shown in the picture,
trishaw, (becak)
There are more things happens, pictures only will not tell the
whole story of the informal activities in Jakarta. I will try to
cover all these things in my thesis.
(Please contact the author with comments or questions. She would love to get advice and suggestions.)