Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, is the city that people love to hate.

With a population of about 10 million, Jakarta is steadily sinking. Its traffic is legendary. Its air quality ranks among the world’s worst. It has few parks or cultural monuments. Even walking on its sidewalks is a hazardous exercise.

Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, announced on Monday a plan to fix the capital: Start from scratch. He has proposed stripping Jakarta of its status as the country’s capital and building a new capital on the island of Borneo.

Under his plan, political figures and government workers would desert the sinking city on the island of Java and relocate to one of the country’s less crowded islands, Borneo — famous for threatened orangutans and dense jungles that are giving way to palm oil plantations.

On Monday, Mr. Joko said the new capital would be built in the province of East Kalimantan near the coastal cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda where the government already owns about 440,000 acres.