Brief information about the Medan
Medan Medan (Indonesian pronunciation: [meˈdan] ) is the capital and largest city of the Indonesian province of North Sumatra. A regional hub and financial centre of Sumatra, it is regarded as one of the four main central cities of Indonesia, alongside Jakarta, Surabaya, and Makassar.
Medan has a population of over 2.2 million within its city limits, and over 3.4 million in its built-up urban area, making it the fourth largest urban area in Indonesia. The Medan metropolitan area—which includes neighbouring Binjai, Deli Serdang Regency, and a part of Karo Regency—is the largest metropolitan area outside of Java, with 4.
6 million residents. Medan is a multicultural metropolis and a busy trading city bordered by the Strait of Malacca. A gateway to the western part of Indonesia, Medan is supported by the Port of Belawan and Kualanamu International Airport, both of which are connected to the city centre via toll road and railway.
The city was founded by Guru Patimpus, a Karonese man who named a swampy land in confluence of Deli River and Babura river as Kampung Medan Putri. It later became a part of the Deli Sultanate which was established by Tuanku Gocah Pahlawan in 1632. In the 18th century, its eighth king, Sultan Mahmud Al Rasyid Perkasa Alam, worked with Jacob Nienhuys, a Dutch tobacco merchant, who pioneered the opening of tobacco plantations in Medan.
With the help from the 9th Sultanate Sultan Ma'mun Al Rasyid Perkasa Alam, and also the well-known Chinese businessmen Tjong Yong Hian and Tjong A Fie, the rapid development of the economy transformed Medan into a big trading center with the nickname het land dollar, aka the land of the money.
The Deli Railway was established for shipping rubber, tea, timber, palm oil, and sugar industries from the city to the Port of Belawan. Medan was briefly the capital of the State of East Sumatra in 1947, before it became the provincial capital of North Sumatra in mid-1950.
Medan was dubbed by the Dutch Parijs van Sumatra due to the city's resemblance to Paris. Lamudi, a worldwide real estate portal, recognized Medan as one among six cities in Asia to feature and preserve several colonial architectural sites, while accompanying its growth as a metropolitan city.
Medan is also known as the "City of Million Shophouses", as the majority of the population work in the trade sector, opening shops right under their houses. In recent years, the city has undergone rapid development, which made the residential property prices in Medan trend upward.
According to Bank Indonesia (BI), Medan's residential property price index rose from 205.24 in the fourth quarter of 2013 to 212.17 in the fourth quarter of 2014, and to 214.41 in the first quarter of 2015.