“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.” So says the opening narration of The Six Million Dollar Man. Seriously adjusted for inflation, the story of Steve Austin relates to the saga of Jakarta, Indonesia’s sinking mega-capital. The government of Indonesia is on a quest to rebuild the capital, to be called Nusantara, 800 miles away. While Steve Austin got a few new and improved bionic parts, Indonesian President Joko Widodo is looking to build his new capital from scratch. But the underlying goal remains: To build a better stronger city. Hannah Beech NYT (Gift Article). Welcome to Nusantara:
The audacious project to build a green and walkable capital city from the ground up. “Mr. Joko’s ambitions go far beyond saving Jakarta’s residents from the sea. Nusantara won’t be just any planned city, the president asserts, but a green metropolis run on renewable energy, where there are no choking traffic jams and people can stroll and bike along verdant paths. The new capital, which is known in Indonesia by its abbreviation, I.K.N., will be a paradigm for adapting to a warming planet. And it will be a high-tech city, he says, attracting digital nomads and millennials who will purchase stylish apartments with cryptocurrency. ‘We want to build a new Indonesia,’ Mr. Joko said. ‘This is not physically moving the buildings. We want a new work ethic, new mind-set, new green economy.'” There are of course a lot of doubts about whether Indonesia can really pull this off. That said, there were also a lot of doubts about whether the Bionic Woman could rip a phone book in half, and yet…