Jakarta
Capital city of Indonesia, on the north coast of Java.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| The $40BN Plan to Save The World’s Fastest Sinking City | The B1M | subject | The video explains why Jakarta, a megacity of more than 11M people on a low-lying coastal plain at the mouth of 13 rivers, is sinking up to 15 cm a year, mainly from groundwater extraction. |
Sub-places
The $40BN Plan to Save The World’s Fastest Sinking City — The B1M (2025)
Source: Original · Readwise highlight
Jakarta is the largest city in Southeast Asia, but it’s sinking at a rate of up to 15 centimetres a year
- Role: subject
- In the video: The video explains why Jakarta, a megacity of more than 11M people on a low-lying coastal plain at the mouth of 13 rivers, is sinking up to 15 cm a year, mainly from groundwater extraction. It traces the Dutch founding of Batavia, post-1945 population growth and informal riverbank settlement, then the government’s two responses: a sea wall and a new capital.
- Why it matters: The city is the article’s whole subject: a real-world case of a capital literally sinking and being partly abandoned.