BLUEPRINT FOR BANDUNG
It’s just another Sunday morning at NuArt Sculpture Park, and the creativity unfolding outdoors here immediately catches my eye. I watch, enraptured, as a group of dancers in sarongs swirl across the floor of a breezy pavilion to the strains of Balinese gamelan. Off in the distance, beyond a copper humpback whale rising out of the manicured lawns, visitors shape figurines from balls of clay at low wooden tables set up around a bubbling fountain. Given its setting beside a wooded ravine, I can see why the celebrated Balinese sculptor I Nyoman Nuarta chose this three-hectare site to build his gallery and studio.
The sea of concrete surrounding it, though, isn’t quite so appealing at first glance. Sprawling across a mountain basin in West Java’s Sundanese highlands, Bandung grapples with many of the same issues faced by major cities elsewhere in Indonesia: high population growth, uncontrolled development, and inadequate transport infrastructure. Traffic congestion reaches its peak on weekends, when Jakartans flock here to enjoy the cooler climes and shop at the dizzying number of factory outlets. But
