This article was written for CityChangers.org by Rakhmadi A. Kusumo, who has served as President Director of the Gelora Bung Karno (GBK) Sports Complex Management Center in Jakarta, Indonesia, since January 2021. In it, he explains how sound management with one eye on the future has transformed a 279-hectare sports precinct built in the 1960s into an accessible and multifunctional everyday public destination.
Most mornings at Gelora Bung Karno begin quietly. People arrive before sunrise to exercise. Families visit at weekends. Running clubs meet around the stadium. National athletes train nearby. Office workers use the precinct before or after work. Within a few hours, the same place can look completely different.
The Main Stadium may be preparing for an international football match. Indonesia Arena may be hosting a world championship. The convention centre may be receiving heads of government. Tens of thousands of concertgoers may be arriving. On another day, worshippers may fill the precinct to welcome a revered religious leader.
That range of uses is what makes GBK unusual.
In the 1960s, it was conceived as a monumental sports complex; today, it functions as part of Jakarta’s everyday life. Managing that transition has become one of our most important tasks.
A National Project Born in the 1960s
Jakarta was selected to host the 1962 Asian Games in 1958, at a time when Indonesia had only recently emerged as an independent nation. President Sukarno saw the event as an opportunity to show that the country could build and organise at an international scale. They chose Senayan as the location for the new sports complex.
Construction began in 1960. Soviet financing and technical expertise supported its development, while Indonesian planners, engineers, and architects worked on what was then an extraordinary undertaking for the young republic.
The Main Stadium became the centrepiece. Its most recognisable feature was the continuous circular roof known as the “Temu Gelang”. At the time, stadium roofs generally covered selected grandstands or tribune seats. The idea of wrapping the stadium with one continuous roof gave the building an identity that remains immediately recognisable today.
When the fourth Asian Games opened on 24 August 1962, more than 100,000 people filled the stadium. The event was not just about sport, but it was also about nation-building and global friendship.
A Sum of Many Parts
From the beginning, GBK was more than a collection of sports facilities, it was part of a much wider transformation of Jakarta altogether. The Asian Games accelerated the making of a modern capital in a period that also saw the construction of new major roads, monuments, Hotel Indonesia, and the Semanggi interchange.
The legal status of the land is equally important to the story. Parts of GBK were built on land that contained settlements, gardens, and agricultural fields. Transformation was made possible through the Komando Urusan Pembebasan Asian Games (KUPAG), the special body responsible for acquiring the land, relocating families, and handling compensation associated with the Senayan development.
In 1984, a presidential decree expressly affirmed that the land, buildings, and subsequent developments belonged to the Republic of Indonesia. Therefore, today GBK is not simply a historic sports district, it is a major state-owned asset, created through public investment and held for the benefit of the nation.
A Place That Kept Accumulating History
The complex continued to serve different versions of Indonesia. Having hosted numerous sporting events, including the Southeast Asian Games and a mass with Pope John Paul II in 1989, the complex was formally recognised as cultural heritage in the 1990s. Then came another major turning point.
Jakarta and Palembang city won the right to host the 2018 Asian Games. GBK underwent a large renovation programme ahead of the event. The Main Stadium, Istora (a multifunction venue abbreviated from Istana Olaharga), Basketball Arena, Tennis Indoor, the Aquatic centre, and other facilities were upgraded to Olympic standards while preserving key architectural elements.
This became an important precedent for us. Old infrastructure does not have to be replaced simply because it is old. The better question is whether its identity can be protected while its performance is improved. GBK proved that it can.
A New Lease of Life Once More
I became President Director of PPKGBK in January 2021. It was an unusual time to take responsibility for one of Indonesia’s largest sports and event districts. The COVID-19 pandemic had stopped concerts, restricted sporting events, and changed how people used public space. Venues designed for mass gatherings suddenly had to find a different purpose.
At the same time, the Government of Indonesia was mobilising every available resource to protect public health and accelerate vaccinations. Istora hosted mass inoculation programmes for healthcare workers followed shortly after by the general population.
For me, that period changed the way I looked at the GBK.
Integrating Public Access
A stadium is easy to understand when 70,000 people are inside it. The harder question is what value it creates when there is no match on.
That question influenced many of the decisions that followed. We began opening up the facilities to recreational users. The running track inside the Main Stadium, for example, was made available periodically to the public through a booking system. People who had previously experienced the stadium only from the stands or on television could now run on the same track used by elite athletes.
It was a modest initiative, but GBK began to feel more accessible. By 2023, when the world had returned to normal, the character of the precinct had changed dramatically. International bands like BLACKPINK performed and we welcomed Argentina to Jakarta, then the reigning FIFA World Cup men’s football champions.
Two months later, President Joko Widodo inaugurated Indonesia Arena, a new indoor venue that added around 16,000 seats to the GBK ecosystem and gave Jakarta a modern arena capable of hosting basketball, badminton, volleyball, concerts, and other indoor events. In September 2023, the Jakarta Convention Center became one of the principal venues for the 43rd ASEAN. Heads of government, senior officials, and representatives of major international organisations met inside the same district normally associated with sport and entertainment.
During that year, GBK had to operate as a sports venue, concert destination, diplomatic zone, and public park, often within very short intervals. That is when the idea of GBK as an urban district, rather than simply a sports complex, became much clearer.
The Meaning of Civic Infrastructure
A sports complex does not have to serve only athletes. When designed and managed properly, such places can support some of the largest civic gatherings in a country.
One of the most important events during my tenure came in September 2024 when another Pope, Francis, celebrated mass at GBK. Around 100,000 people crowded into the precinct.
The scale was significant, but what interested me more was the meaning of the event. GBK had been built in the 1960s as a symbol of a new Indonesia. Decades later, it was being used for a gathering centred on faith, coexistence, and international dialogue.
Operational preparation involved many institutions. Security, traffic, crowd management, hospitality, access, medical services, and venue operations all had to work together. It showed how adaptable national infrastructure can be.
Building an Everyday Destination
Big events attract attention, but the daily use of GBK matters just as much.
By 2024, the precinct was receiving roughly 25,000 visitors on ordinary days. They run, walk, meet friends, bring their children, eat, exercise, and spend time outdoors.
That mix is becoming part of GBK’s identity and for an urban asset, this kind of repeat use is valuable. People develop a relationship with a place. Because they experience it regularly, they stop seeing it only as government property or event infrastructure – it becomes part of their routine. That changes how the place is perceived and how it should be managed.
Our job is no longer limited to maintaining stadiums or venues. We have to think about shade, pedestrian comfort, cleanliness, security, traffic, public access, landscaping, waste, digital services, and the relationship between different users. In December 2025, Indonesia Arena entered another phase with the introduction of Wi-Fi 7, making it one of the most technologically advanced event venues in the country.
In practice, managing GBK increasingly resembles managing a small piece of the city.
Sustainability Also Means Financial Sustainability
But a public asset that cannot maintain itself will eventually deteriorate. Financial discipline is therefore part of long-term public value.
GBK has to balance public access with commercial activity. The goal is not to maximise commercialisation, it is to generate enough economic value to keep improving the asset. PKGBK recorded around Rp255 billion (approximately $14 million USD) in revenue in 2022. Audited revenue for 2025 reached Rp812 billion (~$45.5 million USD), the highest level recorded in GBK’s history. For me, those figures matter because they create room to reinvest. They help fund maintenance, technology, public facilities, landscapes, venue improvements, and better service.
From Sport to a Wider Urban Economy
With international names in music like BLACKPINK, BTS, and Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, performing at the complex, Jakarta is increasingly relevant to the touring circuit. Winning a unique regional date says something about the city as much as it does about the venue.
Concert nights bring another very different audience into the same place that earlier hosted international football matches. And that is exactly the point. Twenty years ago, it would have been easy to describe these as unrelated events. I no longer see them that way. Together, they form an integral part of our urban economy.
An international football match fills hotels and restaurants. A global concert brings visitors from other Indonesian cities and from abroad. Airlines move more passengers to the country. Shopping centres benefit. Food and beverage businesses gain customers. Digital platforms sell tickets. Sponsors activate brands. Local crews, production companies, security teams, and transport operators find work. The economic effect extends far beyond the stadium gates.
This is why I view GBK not simply as an event venue, but as infrastructure that can help Indonesia compete for people, attention, and economic activity.
Lessons for Other Cities
GBK’s history offers several lessons for cities dealing with ageing mega-event infrastructure.
First, think beyond the event itself. The Asian Games lasted only a few weeks in 1962. The infrastructure built for it has served Jakarta for more than sixty years.
Second, preserve what people recognise. The “Temu Gelang” roof matters because it carries memories. Modernisation works best when people can still recognise the place they grew up with.
Third, design for ordinary days. A district that functions only when tickets are being sold will spend too much of its life empty and miss commercial opportunities and those to serve the local community.
Fourth, give old infrastructure new purposes. GBK has been a sports venue, vaccination centre, concert ground, diplomatic zone, religious gathering place, and public park. That flexibility is one reason it remains relevant.
Finally, treat management as seriously as architecture. A public space that is beautifully designed can still fail if it is dirty, difficult to access, or poorly operated. It’s okay to remind people of their own role in that.
In 2024, GBK estimated that event activity generated around 10,000 cubic metres of waste annually. We responded with programmes aimed at improving event cleanliness and increasing responsibility among organisers and visitors. It works because GBK is now not only a space for the public to enjoy, but also a place they care about.
An Integral Part of the Future of Jakarta
In June 2026, Block 15, an important part of the wider GBK precinct, returned to state control following a long legal process. The land has deep historical connections to the original Asian Games development and to the state land assembled for the Senayan complex.
Only days later, President Prabowo Subianto instructed the government to pursue an integrated transformation of the wider GBK area, with the objective of strengthening it as an international-standard national icon and creating a new centre of economic activity in Jakarta.
That instruction opens a much larger question for us: what should GBK become over the next twenty or thirty years?
The answer cannot simply just be more buildings. We need better connections between what already exists and the neighbourhoods surrounding us. Visitors arriving for a concert, business convention, or sporting spectacle should be able to move through the district easily, to walk to restaurants, hotels, and public transport. They should experience the entire precinct, not just their time inside one of the stadiums. And somebody who has no ticket to an event should still be able to come to enjoy GBK tomorrow morning in their leisure time.
That balance is the next challenge, but it is also what makes this moment so exciting.