TOWERING GROWTH

Modern office blocks rise amid squalid neighborhoods lacking basic sanitation in the capital of the world's fourth most populous—and 87 percent Muslim—nation. Jakarta reflects Indonesia's vast resources, but also its astonishing problems, including: poverty, overpopulation (expected to increase 12-fold from 1950 to 2015), horrendous traffic, stifling pollution, and endemic corruption. Political and ethnic strife can boil over, as in the riots of 1998 when more than a thousand were killed in the city. Petroleum and natural gas, as well as forests and farming, have potential for enriching the city as well as the countryside, but managing the resources for the benefit of all is not guaranteed.