The first high rise commercial buildings were built along Jalan Thamrin. However, due to the limited space and the mounting price of land, the high-rise-commercial building development was stretched to Jalan Jenderal Sudirman. Today, the expansion has reached the Sudirman Commercial District Center and Kuningan area.

    Unlike the high-rise commercial buildings which growth concentrated in certain area of Jakarta, the development of low rise commercial buildings in Jakarta has thrived in almost all areas across Jakarta. The most common form of low rise buildings is ruko or rukan. Ruko means Rumah Toko (Residential/Store) while rukan means Rumah Kantor (Residential/Office). In Indonesia, it is legal to have a residential and commercial function in one building. Many people utilize their ground level building as an office or a store, while using the upper section as the residential area.

    In addition to ruko and rukan, the construction of the new malls also contributed to the addition of new retail spaces. The mall developers in Jakarta seemed to be in competition to build larger mall with larger retail space. However, these aggressive developments have caused an oversupply of retail space in malls. Today in some malls, we can find open malls with almost no tenants or visitors, while ironically, some other malls have long tenant waiting list.

    Almost every large company, local and international ones, has a representative office in Jakarta. The rapid development of Jakarta, compared to other cities in Indonesia, was one of the direct impacts of the centralized government policy. Even though currently the government has implemented autonomy in every province, we still can expect Jakarta to be the main gateway of Indonesia commerce for the next decade or two.