In this Personal Perspective, Publisher Alistair Speirs discusses space and how the overdevelopment in Bali is making it more and more difficult to enjoy what space there is:

When the voice of Captain James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise said, “Space, The Final Frontier”, so many years ago, he was of course referring to that amazing and impossible to comprehend space – the universe! A place that as far as the capacity of the human mind is concerned, is without limits, infinite and never-ending.

Overdevelopment in Bali

Here in Bali the story is quite different where the land is bounded on all sides by oceans and space is severely limited by it and the unusable mountainous land in the middle. So here the final frontier is lack of space not too much of it, which you may think would drive everyone to use their land carefully, not to overbuild and to leave space to breathe between buildings.

Amazingly this is not the case. And often is just the reverse with people jamming as much real estate onto a piece of land as they can, and putting their buildings not just close to but actually up against their neighbours, often taking their light, blocking their view and looking down into them .

There are laws against such encroachment in most countries, there is also respect and good sense. But none seem to apply here where the use of land has turned into ab-use, and the good sense has turned into non-sense.

I can hear James T Kirk saying  “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before “ and imagine the Bali version “to go where everyone else has gone before (Legian, Seminyak, petitenget and now Canggu) and explore strange new organic recipes, to seek new lifestyles. And to fill every available space with steel, cement and glass.”  All I can say is “Beam me up Scotty” I need to find somewhere to breathe.

Alistair G. Speirs

Alistair G. Speirs

Alistair G Speirs, OBE, is the Publisher of NOW! Magazines. He has been in the publishing, advertising and PR business for the last 25 years. He started both NOW! Bali and NOW! Jakarta as each region's preferred community magazine.