Wanted: An egalitarian mall with local taste

Like many other Jakartans, I'm also appalled by the mushrooming of department stores in the city and Greater Jakarta. I, too, wish for more open green space, libraries, playground, bicycle lane and pedestrian, rather than see another gigantic air conditioned box in which any activity can't be done without wasting money.

But if I have to choose one favorite shopping mall in Jakarta – the lesser than two (or in this case 53) evils -- I would choose Mal Kelapa Gading (MKG) in North Jakarta. Which Mal Kelapa Gading, you asked, 1, 2, 3..oops there's no 4, or 5? All of them!

Sure, the presence of MKG and its friends -- Sports Mall, Mall of Indonesia (MoI), Artha Gading, etc, as well as a bunch of apartment buildings -- have worsened the incidence of flood in the area. But let's discuss it another time.

First of all, I like MKG because it doesn't have an intimidating or pompous facade. The building is not high, or flashy with windows displaying luxurious branded items. The outer look is blending with the environment and the neighborhood, which is mostly houses and shophouses.

The access is also easy; there are public tranportations that can stop right in front of the entrance without being shooed by the security officer. Inside the mall, the most interesting section is the array of restaurants and food courts with a diversity of scrumptious foods. Compared that to other malls that mostly provide junk food, overpriced Indonesian food or fancy restaurants.

The stores and supermarkets are also within different ranges of price and goods, catering to middle to upper and middle to lower classes. A number of stores cannot be found in other malls, although the anchor tenants are the same old foreign brands. Another attraction is the bazaar on the halls, which sell everything from clothes to furniture, from toys to pillows, but it manages not to turn the interior into a chaos.

It's no wonder that every weekend, the mall is swarmed with visitors, not only from North Jakarta, but also from East Jakarta and Bekasi. Other malls in Kelapa Gading area are not that crowded, some are even deserted and waiting for their destinies to be shut down. The key words I think are 'egalitarian' and 'local taste'.

Say, if someone with modest or worn out clothes and footwear, or a flock of children from the lower bracket of economy, enter the likes of Pacific Place or Grand Indonesia, it would create pity look or a pinch in the stomach, or disgust. But MKG can invite without abruptly separating visitors with the 'outside world' or creating social gaps, that visitors from different economic classes will mix.

In terms of the stuff sold, the mall knows the taste of visitors in the area. Give it up, already, Indonesians love to eat Indonesian food. Each area in the capital also has distinctive taste in clothes, for example. But mall owners tend to uniform them, which can be seen from installing the same anchor tenant. In nearby Emporium Pluit, for example, SOGO department store is deserted, and similar thing happened in other malls in Kelapa Gading. (A little note, mall managements in Jakarta have been complaining about the decrease in the number of visitors. Analysts said that aside from crisis, the market is saturated already and those who shop are the same people over and over).

As with shopping mall with local taste, it is interesting to note the rise of new 'modern market'. It is simply a more modern and clean traditional market where people can buy raw (and cooked) food and other stuff (cooking utensil, glassware, etc), without having to worry about the dirty place and the smell.

The number is still very few, but it is so fun to visit the place as it revives the childhood memory of going to the market with my mom. It is also an alternative place to eat out and hang out without wasting too much money or having the feeling that we have to dress up.

There have to be more places like this instead of cold and arrogant malls, which can only create obese kids, consumtive and materialistic people, and widening gap in society that will lead to social envy.

Posted by hera at Monday, June 15, 2009 3:20 PM | Permalinks