A City’s hustle and bustle can often lead to a hectic and stressful life. Nevertheless, many people opt for urban living due to a myriad of benefits it has to offer.
To name a few, city dwellers can visit shopping malls, enjoy the nightlife, meet with friends at a café or bistro, dine with their spouses at a fancy white-table restaurant, exercise at a fitness club, watch new films at the cinema or take their children to an amusement park.
Indeed, despite the drawbacks of traffic and noise, city life has an important advantage: wherever you go in a city, you’re probably close to important amenities.
In addition to entertainment, shopping and dining, urbanites have their pick of schools, universities and informal education centers, as well as health centers and hospitals. Cities also offer more job opportunities.
It’s no surprise, then, that people are flocking to cities in great numbers. Newcomers embrace the hustle and bustle so they can enjoy the convenience and opportunity.
As metro life becomes increasingly popular, however, cities must make room to accommodate everyone. In the search for more living space, urban planners are looking up.
More and more, developers are favoring vertical living spaces and high rise centers, typically in the form of integrated superblocks. These mixed use buildings allow people to easily live, shop, work and entertain – all without ever stepping outside.
Urban amenities, it seems, are getting even more accessible.
That’s good news for people in busy cities like Jakarta, where notoriously bad traffic can turn a trip to the supermarket into an hours-long odyssey. With everything in one space, superblock homes are the answer to awful commutes.
“It took me two hours to get to work and vice versa. By the time I got home my children were already slept,” Andre, who works in CBD Sudirman area, recalled his past when he used to live in the western part of Jakarta.
He has since last year moved to Senayan City, and is now happily reveling in his new life where “I can now be closer to my work and spend more time with my family.”
At about 48,000 square meters, Senayan City is the first mixed-use development by the Agung Podomoro Group. With seven floors, it features apartments, an upscale mall and an office tower.
The apartment section is state-of-the-art, complete with a fitness center and an Olympic-size swimming pool, while the attached shopping mall carries top-notch brands. Taken as a whole, the space is a synergism of shopping, working, living, recreation and entertainment.
Other new high-rise buildings help residents enjoy the outdoors, drawing inspiration from the local geography and culture.
In North Jakarta, for example, an Intiland Development is called Regatta, the Italian name for “boat race.” With 10 residential apartment towers, a five-star hotel and a water park, Regatta stands sumptuously over 11 hectares of land near Jakarta’s seaside.
“This mixed-use development is built with a nautical theme, and it overlooks the Java Sea,” said Theresia Rustandi, Intiland’s corporate secretary. “We designed Regatta as an exclusive waterfront city that features facilities ranging from a business center and ballroom to restaurants and cafes, as well as retail shops, boutiques, a spa and a fitness center.”
If that’s not enough, Indonesians can also head overseas to find vertical developments. Nearby, in the island-state of Singapore, leading developer Wing Tai Holdings Limited has created two premium apartments with easy access to amenities. The apartments, Helios Residences and Le Nouvel Ardmore, are only a stone’s throw away fro Orchard Road, Singapore’s most famous shopping and entertainment hub.
“Many Indonesians have purchased units in both apartments due to the location,” said Len Siew Lian, general property manager at Wing Tai Holdings Limited. “That’s a consideration for those seeking to enjoy Singapore’s city lifestyle.”
By Aulia R. Sungkar. Published in The Jakarta Globe, September 23, 2011.