Parks and Green Spaces in Jakarta

Part of the Jakarta travel guide — see every topic in All Jakarta Guides.

Jakarta is short of parks. Rapid, largely unplanned growth left the city with one of the lower ratios of public green space of any major metropolis, and much of what exists is either a monument plaza or a paid attraction. The consequence is that the mall became the park. That said, there are genuine green escapes: the enormous Merdeka Square, a restored forest park in the south, mangroves on the northern coast, and the vast open-air museum of Taman Mini, which is a park in everything but name.

In the centre

Merdeka Square is one of the largest city squares in the world, around eighty hectares of lawn and trees with the National Monument at its centre — open, hot and busy with joggers at dawn and families in the evening. Taman Suropati in Menteng is a small, genuinely pleasant colonial-era park where musicians practise at weekends. Taman Menteng and Lapangan Banteng have both been redeveloped and are used properly. Along the Sudirman corridor, the pedestrianised Sunday car-free morning turns the main road itself into the city's biggest park.

Car-Free Day

Every Sunday morning, the Sudirman–Thamrin corridor closes to traffic from around six until eleven, and tens of thousands of people fill it — running, cycling, dancing, exercising in groups, eating from stalls, with the skyline either side and no cars at all. It is the single best free thing to do in Jakarta and it is a genuine expression of the city's civic life rather than a tourist event. Go, walk the length of it, and eat breakfast from a cart.

Further out

Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, in East Jakarta, is a 150-hectare park with pavilions representing every province of Indonesia in its own architecture, plus a lake shaped as a map of the archipelago, museums, gardens and a cable car. It is dated, enormous and genuinely useful for understanding the country's diversity in an afternoon. Ragunan Zoo in the south is large and shaded. Hutan Kota Srengseng and the Angke mangrove reserve on the north coast are the closest thing to wild land inside the city.

Air, water and reality

Two things shape outdoor life here. Jakarta's air quality is poor for much of the year and among the worst of any major city on some days; check an index before planning a long run or cycle. And the city floods — large parts sit below sea level and are subsiding, and the wet season from November to March brings serious flooding most years. Both are reasons the population defaults indoors, and both are worth factoring into a visit rather than being surprised by.

Parks and Green Spaces at a glance

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