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Project: The Sudirman Six
Max Sell John Wray IV
Since the 1950s, the urbanization process in Jakarta has transformed a vast area of former agrarian settlements into the world’s third-largest megacity. A massive investment in transportation infrastructure during this time established motorized vehicles as the prevailing form of personal mobility within the city. But with Jakarta’s rapid population growth, this infrastructural investment has created a condition of nearconstant gridlock. The Sudirman Corridor, Jakarta’s main thoroughfare, operates along the north–south axis of the city’s central spine, often to the detriment of the local-scale lines of mobility it traverses. At the intersection of Sudirman and the Banjir Canal is Dukuh Atas, a rail station serving an east–west regional connection that will be combined with Jakarta’s new north–south Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) line. Here, a pilot project for future transit-oriented development creates the opportunity for a novel confluence of collective and social space mediated by the rhythms of the city and the introduction of new scales of mobility.