Why it looks like this

West of Jakarta, Tangerang grew from a Dutch-era river town (with one of Java's oldest Chinese communities, the 'Cina Benteng') into an industrial belt and then into commuter country. Soekarno–Hatta, Indonesia's main airport, landed on its coastal flats in the 1980s.

The map's signature is the private city: enormous master-planned townships — BSD City, Gading Serpong, Alam Sutera and others — each built by a developer with its own grid, gates and malls, stitched loosely together by toll roads and the rail line to Jakarta.