How it started
History
In the 1980s, the Serpong district of South Tangerang was a largely uninhabited rubber plantation. At the time, infrastructure such as asphalted roads and electricity was yet to be built. In 1984, Ir. Ciputra planned to build an independent township in the district, to be named as Bumi Serpong Damai. The development of the township was backed by 11 private companies including Pembangunan Jaya, Sinar Mas, Salim Group, and Metropolitan Kentjana with a total of Rp 3.2 trillion investment. The inauguration was held on 16 January 1989, attended by the Minister of Home Affairs at the time, Rudini.
At the time of project development during the 1990s, BSD City was the most ambitious urban planning scheme in Indonesia to combine housing, business and commercial properties. It is designed to be a self-sustaining community, with various types of public facilities available to its residents. The township started growing, and as the Jakarta–Tangerang Toll Road opened, residents started coming in as it provides an easier access to the township.
During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, real estate business in Indonesia stagnated for around 5 years. Due to this, Bumi Serpong Damai changed ownership to Sinar Mas Land around 2003–2004. To change its brand image, Sinar Mas eventually changed the name of the township into its initials, becoming BSD City, and built new residential clusters with new names (De Latinos, The Icon, Sevilla, Foresta, etc.) to market it better. Sinar Mas continues to develop the township, expanding from the Serpong district into the Tangerang Regency, in which they plan to build the next phase of BSD City.
In recent years, BSD City continues to expand exponentially, with new apartment and housing complexes being built in collaboration with international property companies such as Hong Kong Land ('Nava Park') and Mitsubishi Corp ('The Zora'). Since then, many consider BSD City as an affluent or 'elite' district within the bustling metropolitan area of Jabodetabek. The extension of the Toll road to Balaraja and the direct connection to JORR 2 also increases the accessibility of the area.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bumi Serpong Damai, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2