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Rapidly growing up into metropolitan Denpasar became a large pool of a lot of mess. Chased by migrant looking for better life and seen as social economic barometer of the whole island, the city served as pool of facilities, residents, waste, and even crime. Another negative impact of the growth is need for housing, forcing green areas and rice field translated into residential area.

Portrait of increasing density in Denpasar was captured when Bali Post – the island’s largest local daily – had an aerial survey on Thursday, August 14th. From the air, Denpasar seemed to be covered by tile roofs cascading to each other without leaving any space in between. There was nearlu no open space when the chopper rented for the activity flew across Renon, Tohpati, Suwung, and Western Denpasar bordering to Badung Regency. Off the city ongoing residential construction easily found scattered around. Similar scene also shown in the new district of North Denpasar.

It looked that there were no sufficient air to breath in Denpasar, as the city with 650,000 population fully covered by the brown color of tile roofs of housings. Around Renon, the only open space found was the Puputan Square. The such condition was predicted as a result of uncontrollable increase of population following the city’s growth as the island’s center of services, business, and education. A number of government institutions and large corporations especially commercial banks chose Renon to set their representative offices.

Rice field at the South-East area of Renon was getting eaten up by constructions. similar scene was also shown by the rice field area between Renon and Sidakarya, which has been squeezed by residential constructions. Statistic issued by the government shown that Denpasar has only 3,147 hectares of rice field remaining. Mangrove forest on the coast between Sanur and Nusadua has also been eaten up by construction, including the construction of sewerage processing facilities built at Suwung.

Another indicator of over-population in Denpasar was the city waste disposal area at Suwung. The soaring mountain of rubbish was result of between 2,500-3,000 m3 of rubbish produced by the city everyday, so much that the truck taking rubbish out of the city were still operating even on business hours. Without implementation of proper handling mechanism, rubbish could potentially translates itself into severe problem.