Bali, Paradise island for its people ~ Musing on technology, computer and internet

Bali, Paradise island for its people

May 30, 2007

I always dreaming about living in a well-maintained beautiful place.I always dreaming of a city who offers its inhabitants good public services, living in a city where a park with abundance of benches are available for people to sit and relax. Though I never travelled abroad, I have enough information to compare how good my place to live is.I lives in South Bali's sub-urban area renowned as an area of International hotels, luxury villas and beautiful white sandy beaches. I was living in Denpasar, Bali capital for many years. It is not a big city, but it's change rapidly, without a proper development plan, I'm afraid it will turned into 'metro-pollutant' instead of 'modern' metropolis city in the future.

As many cities in Indonesia, Denpasar and others cities in Bali are lack of 'public' amenities.Public transportation, parks, promenades, playgrounds, sidewalks are rarely found. There are places such as 'Puputan Badung' square and 'Renon' square which are choices for Denpasar's weekenders to spent on. They can go to Sanur, Kuta or Nusa Dua if they want beaches. Those places are free of charge for entrance, but if you want to bring your kids to see elephants, kind of birds and reptile or to a zoo park, you should pay, and it is not cheap for most of Bali inhabitants. As most of Indonesian, they are poor. Being a world class holiday destination, Bali government should thinking on giving more to its inhabitants. Bali's hotels, luxury villas and those taxes from tourism activities is a good source of fund, I believe we could pimp Bali like Singapore if we want it, and if do it well.

What Bali presently lack of are, green spaces, mass public transportation, and inexpensive public services for inhabitants. Bali boasts rapid hypermarket development, giant shopping malls, private luxury villas and converted lands to residential housing. As we could think of, it seems that Bali has no city or urban planners. Government policy still developed in 'pro-market' manners such as profit and private sector oriented, no respect to the majority of inhabitants and arbitrarily abandon its inhabitants needs. They are greedy and being ignorant. Traditional market and small retailers where mostly Balinese buy their daily needs couldn't compete with hypermarkets, they are big retailers with big venture capital. So where Bali goes to ?, become an island of thousands hypermarket ?. Within 500 meters I would find a hypermarket, what a life. In Bali shopping is a piece a cake, 24 hours hypermarts is everywhere.Do you think we need a law that limiting those big retailers opening hours ?. Just to let the small retailers a chance to survive.

Although the appalling numbers of private vehicles (cars and motorcycle), I couldn't find any good solutions offered was solving the problem caused. With limited lands , Bali is not expecting any wide roads or toll roads, Bali need mass public transportation. Inter-regency train would be great, monorail or metro-line will be a plus in supporting the tourism around Denpasar, Kuta, Sanur and Nusa Dua. The mass transportation system should be professionally managed, should be affordable by most Bali inhabitant, no more over-capacity passengers, no more Flinstone-aged buses, no more 'transportation terminal' owned by 'preman', no more 'ngetem / gantre', it should be base on schedule.

In my humble opinion, if transportation and telecommunication system are great, than many sectors will developing significantly. We Balinese just want our taxes goes to the right place, from us and back to us, for all of us, to create a paradise for its own people, a sustainable Bali. A heavenly place to live, a paradise island.


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2 comments:

ramayadi said...

I think Denpasar changed into "metro-pollutant" already.crowded in every corner of city,pollution..sometime i was thinking if i move to quite village,unfortunately my village has changed already, where it's much of wild villas :)
Hei Bro, Seems ABL need your articles hehehehehe. Happy environment day!

Anonymous said...

"wild villas", nice phrase :). Happy Environment Day too bro, yesterday I was off, and was off from Internet too.