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The Indonesian city of Jakarta is home to one of the most unusual
residential projects in the world – a suburb located atop a 10-storey
shopping mall.
Over the past 20 years, Jakarta has become one of the world’s most
crowded megacities. With over 10 million residents in its metropolitan
area alone and up to three times that in the greater Jakarta area, the
city is quickly running out of land to build on. While other crowded
capitals, like Tokyo, are expanding vertically, Jakarta is expanding
horizontally, with most residents preferring low-rise houses instead of
apartments. With real-estate in increasingly short supply, developers
have been forced to think outside the box, and that’s how urban oddities
like Cosmo Park came to exist…
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Consisting of 78 two-storey villas and featuring its own network of
asphalt roads, plenty of greenery, swimming pools, and even a tennis
court, Cosmo Park looks like an average, cookie-cutter suburb. But zoom
out a little bit and you’re in for a major shock. The whole place sits
atop the Thamrin City Mall, a 10-storey shopping mall in central
Jakarta.
Cosmo Park has been around for about 14 years, but few knew about its
existence outside the bustling Indonesian capital until 2019, when a
photo shared on Twitter went viral. It showed the residential complex
from the air, with the rest of the ground-level city sprawled around it.
The bizarre location left people scratching their heads about the safety
of such a project.
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Some of the residents of Cosmo Park admitted that they too thought it
was strange when they first saw photos of the villas on Instagram. The
idea of living so high-up in a city where low-rise buildings are the
norm seemed strange, but when they visited the place, they just fell in
love with the peace and quiet, as well as the privacy it offered despite
being in the center of the busy capital.
The entire residential area is divided into 5 blocks, from A to F, and
it is accessible only to those with a Cosmo Tower pass. Residents can
drive to and from the complex via a special ramp, and the whole place is
surrounded by a high metal fence to prevent accidents.
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Rooftop architecture is not unheard of. In fact, we featured two
examples of villas built illegally on top of other residential
buildings, but Cosmo Park is something else entirely. Developers had all
the permits to go ahead with the project, and it is actually viewed by
experts as an example of ingenious design.
Back in 2019, Cosmo Park houses were priced anywhere from 3 to 5 billion
rupiahs ($200,000 – $334,000), but with inflation wreaking havoc all
over the world and real estate being even more scarce, we suspect that
prices are even higher today.
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