Jakarta - City of Indonesia

Jakarta , is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. It also has a greater population than any other city in Southeast Asia. It was formerly known as Sunda Kelapa , Jayakarta , Batavia , and Djakarta. Jakarta is the country's economic, cultural and political center. Jakarta currently is the twelfth largest city in the world. Its metropolitan area, Jabodetabek, contains more than 23 million people.

Jakarta is served by the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and Tanjung Priok harbour. Since 2004, Jakarta, while under the governance of Sutiyoso, has built a new bus system known as "TransJakarta" or "Busway", and is now planning to expand the number of routes. The city had hoped to establish its newest transportation system, the Jakarta Monorail, in 2007, but the project was abandoned by the developer, PT Jakarta Monorail, in March 2008. Jakarta is the location of the Jakarta Stock Exchange, the Bank of Indonesia, and the National Monument, or Tugu Monas.

Jakarta has a hot and humid equatorial/tropical climate according to the Köppen climate classification system. Located in the western-part of Indonesia, Jakarta's wet season rainfall peak is January with average monthly rainfall of 350 millimetres, and its dry season low point is August with a monthly average of 60 millimetres.

The old name of Jakarta was Sunda Kelapa. The earliest record mentioning this area as a capital city can be traced to the Indianized kingdom of Tarumanagara as early as the fourth century. In AD 39, King Purnawarman established Sunda Pura as a new capital city for the kingdom, located at the northern coast of Java. Purnawarman left seven memorial stones with inscriptions bearing his name spread across the area, including the present-day Banten and West Java provinces. The Tugu Inscription is considered the oldest of all of them.

The Kingdom of Sunda made a peace agreement with Portugal by allowing the Portuguese to build a port in 1522 in order to defend against the rising power of the Sultanate of Demak from central Java.In 1527, Fatahillah, a Sumatran Malay warrior from Demak attacked Kingdom of Sunda and succeeded in conquering the harbour on June 22, 1527, after which Sunda Kelapa was renamed Jayakarta.

The city was renamed "Jakarta" by the Japanese during their World War II occupation of Indonesia. Following World War II, Indonesian Republicans withdrew from allied-occupied Jakarta during their fight for Indonesian independence and established their capital in Yogyakarta. In 1950, once independence was secured, Jakarta was once again made the national capital. Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno, envisaged Jakarta as a great international city. He instigated large government-funded projects undertaken with openly nationalistic and modernist architecture.Projects in Jakarta included a clover-leaf highway, a major boulevard , monuments such as The National Monument, major hotels, and a new parliament building.

As the economic and political capital of Indonesia, Jakarta attracts many foreign as well as domestic immigrants. As a result, Jakarta has a decidedly cosmopolitan flavor and a diverse culture. Many of the immigrants are from the other parts of the island of Java, bringing along a mixture of dialects of the Javanese and Sundanese languages, as well as their traditional foods and customs.

Jakarta has several performance centers, such as the Senayan center. Traditional music is often found at high-class hotels, including wayang and gamelan performances. As the nation's largest city and capital, Jakarta has lured much national and regional talent who hope to find a greater audience and more opportunities for success.

The concentration of wealth and political influence in the city means that it has much more noticeable foreign influence on its landscape and culture, an effect illustrated by the presence in the city of many major international fast-food chains, for example.

Jakarta is the home of many universities, the oldest of which are state-run University of Indonesia and the privately-owned Universitas Nasional . There are also many other private universities in Jakarta, such as Universitas Trisakti and Universitas Tarumanagara, which are two of the few largest private universities in Jakarta. As the largest city and the capital, Jakarta houses a large number of students from various parts of Indonesia, many of whom reside in dormitories or home-stay residences. Similar to other large cities in developing Asian countries, there are many professional schools. For basic education, there are a variety of primary and secondary schools, tagged with public , private and international schools. Two of the major international schools located in Jakarta are the Jakarta International School and the British International School, Jakarta. BIS is a SEASAC and a FOBISSEA school.