JAKARTA - At Obihiro Nikudon in Blok M, getting a table starts with a QR code.
On a weekend visit,* *Migrant Times was told the wait could take between 3 and 5 hours. Customers scanned the code outside the restaurant, received a number and followed the waiting list through their phones. Some had even waited from 5 to 6 in the morning.
They could leave to free-roam the area until their numbers approached. Some walked to M Bloc Space. Others crossed into Melawai, entered one of the malls or waited at Taman Literasi. Videos of the queue had already circulated across TikTok and Instagram, but still, they brought more people to a restaurant that has fewer seats than customers.
The digital queue depended on the district around it. Customers could spend several hours elsewhere in Blok M without losing their place. Older sections of the same district had spent years losing tenants and visitors.
Blok M’s return began with a railway, then spread through old state buildings, public space, walking routes and businesses that gave passengers somewhere to go after leaving the station.
But the streets underneath them came from a plan drawn almost 80 years earlier.
Kebajoran Baroe
Kebayoran Baru was planned in 1948 during the final years of Dutch colonial control over Jakarta, 3 years after Indonesia declared independence.
The capital faced a housing shortage after the Second World War. Planners first considered land near Depok, then selected Kebayoran because it was closer to Jakarta, connected by railway and located on terrain considered suitable for construction.
Indonesian planner Mohamed Soesilo signed the plan. Soesilo had worked with architect and town planner Thomas Karsten, whose ideas had shaped planning in several cities across the Dutch East Indies.
Soesilo divided Kebayoran Baru into 19 sectors, assigned separate areas to housing, green space and commerce, with Blok M occupying the commercial centre. Roads connected it with the surrounding residential sectors and routes leading towards central Jakarta.
The alphabetical structure remains visible through names such as Blok A, Blok M and Blok S. Other sectors became less prominent as administrative neighbourhood names replaced them. Blok B, C and D, for example, became part of Kramat Pela, while Blok M and N became part of Melawai.
Urban planning researcher Erwin Fahmi found 2 ideas associated with Karsten inside Soesilo’s design: “social mix” and an “organic whole.” The first concerned the placement of different social groups within the town.
The second treated housing, streets, shops and public facilities as connected parts of one plan, creating the walkable layout that **underpins **Blok M today. Indonesian planners continued adapting those ideas after sovereignty transferred in December 1949.
Blok M Before MRT and How It Lost Its Pull
Jakarta Governor Ali Sadikin inaugurated Blok M Terminal on 17 June 1968, establishing the area as a primary transit hub.
Shopping centres, cinemas, and street businesses grew around arriving passengers. By the 1980s and 1990s, Blok M was the center of Jakarta youth culture, with 3 major shopping centres concentrated in one district: Aldiron Plaza, Melawai Plaza and Plaza Blok M.
The streets around Melawai became famous for Lintas Melawai, where young people drove around to display their cars and socialise. The scene reached cinemas in 1990 with Eduart P. Sirait’s Blok M: Bakal Lokasi Mejeng.
Around the same time, a Japanese business and entertainment district grew around Melawai as Japanese office workers from Sudirman gathered for dining and nightlife, giving the area the name Little Tokyo.
But then, the crowds began thinning during the following decade.
Newer malls opened across South Jakarta during the 2000s and early 2010s. Cilandak Town Square began operating in 2002, followed by Pondok Indah Mall 2 in 2005 and Gandaria City in 2010. They offered newer cinemas, larger restaurant areas and extensive parking closer to Jakarta’s growing southern neighbourhoods.
The Melawai Plaza study found that Blok M’s older shopping centres lost visitors as customers shifted towards newer malls farther south. The researchers described Melawai Plaza as “a placeless building” whose identity as a place to spend time had disappeared.
Little Tokyo changed as Japanese residents relocated to outer suburbs, while major anchor tenants like Matahari departed. Occupancy at Mal Blok M plummeted from 60 percent in 2015 to 24 percent in 2023.
Then, the pandemic added a sharper shock. The Melawai Plaza study reported that most shops there went bankrupt and closed during 2020 and 2021.
The MRT Connection
President Joko Widodo inaugurated the first phase of MRT Jakarta in 2019, connecting Lebak Bulus in South Jakarta with Bundaran HI in the city centre.
Blok M BCA station placed the district on a scheduled railway connecting central Jakarta directly to the south. Passengers from central Jakarta could reach Blok M without depending entirely on traffic along Sudirman, leaving the station within walking distance of Melawai, Blok M Terminal and a group of unused buildings owned by Peruri, Indonesia’s state-owned banknote printer.
M Bloc Space opened six months after the MRT’s inauguration. Peruri and its private operating partner converted former employee housing and disused production warehouses into restaurants, local-brand shops, workspaces and a music venue.
The site sat between Blok M BCA and ASEAN MRT stations, beside bus and TransJakarta routes. Peruri provided little parking and encouraged visitors to arrive by public transport.
The district’s transport connections continued to expand. The CSW interchange linked ASEAN MRT station with TransJakarta’s elevated route 13 stop, while Jakarta reopened Taman Literasi Martha Christina Tiahahu beside Blok M station in 2022, adding public seating, reading areas and an amphitheatre. Dedicated pavements linked the MRT, Taman Literasi, Blok M Terminal and nearby bus services.
In 2025, Jakarta introduced the Blok M Hub name, appointing MRT Jakarta to manage and renovate the terminal complex, Plaza 1, Plaza 2 and basement levels.
Passenger figures soon reflected Blok M’s new position inside the network. Blok M BCA grew into MRT Jakarta’s second-busiest station after Dukuh Atas BNI, with journeys between Dukuh Atas and Blok M becoming the largest station pairing in the entire system.
MRT Jakarta director Mega Natangsa Tarigan linked the surge directly to the economic and social activity around Blok M Hub, where retail areas outside the station gates crossed 80 percent occupancy.
Blok M Is the Content
By now, Blok M is back in Jakarta’s youth culture, its streets, escalators, thrift racks and food queues circulating online among a new generation of visitors.
Naykilla, Tenxi and Jemsii filmed the music video for Kasih Aba-Aba around Blok M MRT station. Released on 28 April 2025, the song used hipdut, a combination of hip-hop and dangdut that had gained a young audience through TikTok.
The video passed 5 million YouTube views within its first month. A dance filmed on an escalator also spread through social media, placing Blok M inside one of the year’s youth-music trends.
Fashion became part of the trip. During Migrant Times’ visit, thrift sellers inside Blok M Mall advertised clothes for Rp20,000 or Rp35,000 a piece. Young visitors browsed the racks before moving between cafés, food stalls and public spaces around the district. Some stopped to photograph their outfits along the way - for a quick “fit check” snap.
Virality had also become a place name - quite literally.
A narrow passage beside Pasaraya Blok M was labelled Viral Alley, or Gang Viral in Indonesian. Its small kiosks sold food, drinks, clothing and accessories beneath bright signs and murals. Plastic tables filled the space between them.
At Gang Viral, customers often arrived knowing exactly which stall they wanted. They had seen the food on TikTok or Instagram, and many left with their own video of it. The name described how much of the district now worked.
The food queues also created work for people willing to wait on someone else’s behalf, another kind of economy.
Among them was Arabella, who began charging customers to secure places in Obihiro’s digital queue in January 2026. She told local publication detikFood that she could hold a place for groups that did not want to spend hours waiting.
Other operators offered personal shopping and delivery services across several popular Blok M businesses. El and Jel, who began taking orders in September 2025, told detikFinance that they received at least 5 orders a day and earned between Rp2 million and Rp5 million a month.
Unfortunately, the economic logic was simple and brutal: higher demand meant higher prices. More visitors made Blok M’s kiosks more valuable, and the district’s recovery soon showed up in the rent traders were asked to pay.
The Price of Popularity
In September last year, food traders at Plaza 2 began closing their kiosks after receiving bills they said reached Rp15 million for 2 months.
Their complaints spread through social media. Governor Pramono Anung visited the complex on 3 September and threatened to end Jakarta’s partnership with the Melawai Central Market Traders Cooperative, known as KOPEMA, if it had breached its agreement.
MRT Jakarta said the cooperative’s contract set monthly rent at Rp300,000 for an approved small business operating its own kiosk. The rate rose to Rp1.5 million if the cooperative rented the kiosk to another trader.
KOPEMA disputed the traders’ account. Its representatives said some bills covered several kiosks and included deposits, service charges and 2 months of rent.
The rail operator issued a formal warning on 16 September. The city then offered affected traders 2 months of free rent in a basement area managed directly by MRT Jakarta.
After the free period, a 9-square-metre kiosk would cost Rp1.8 million a month, Antara reported. By 19 September, 23 affected businesses and 7 new businesses had moved into the renovated basement area.
Their departure left parts of Plaza 2 quiet again. During Migrant Times’ visit, rows of kiosks were closed and few customers moved through the corridors. The traders who remained sat inside shops surrounded by metal shutters.
A February 2026 policy paper from Jakarta’s development planning agency identified divided management, uneven public-space quality and the risk of gentrification among Blok M’s continuing problems.
The paper traced those problems to control splits between government agencies, publicly owned companies, cooperatives, private businesses and community groups.
Purnomo, 52, had traded in Plaza 2 for more than 10 years. He kept his kiosk open after many of the businesses around him left. “It’s a huge loss. Since so many traders moved away, my income has fallen by more than 50 percent because fewer people come here,” Purnomo told Antara.
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