Why it looks like this

Depok began as a small settlement on the old road and railway between Jakarta and Bogor, and the railway is still its spine: station neighbourhoods strung along the line, each surrounded by housing estates that filled in the gaps.

In the 1980s the University of Indonesia moved its main campus here — a huge green quarter of forest and lakes on the border with Jakarta — and Depok grew from quiet suburb into a city of its own, part of the immense Jabodetabek metropolitan region.