Cities of Tomorrow - Today
July 20, 2002 | 12:00am
Click here to read Part I
Last week, we cruised into a scary Hollywoodized future courtesy of a review of the current blockbuster Minority Report. The moral of the film is that no matter how seemingly fixed our future is – in the eyes of trendsetters, pollsters and all kinds of futurists – we always have a choice.
We can choose not to buy the dystopic scenarios painted by them or the transnational businesses that aim to shape our future lives into unending and all-consuming consumption. We can choose to define our future lives and the cities that will be the prevalent settings for these.
This week, we continue – with a look at cities of a better tomorrow... available today – the Asian cities of Singapore and Hong Kong.
Many of the issues tackled by Steven Spielberg’s futurists and shown in full special effects splendor are in fact already being addressed by governments, city planners, urban designers, landscape architects and architects in various parts of the world, but with various degrees of success.
The movie Minority Report frames these interventions from a Western/American point of view: The valorization of individuality, personal transit vs. mass transit – the leitmotif of ubiquitous consumption, all those product ads. We should not take all this lock, stock and barrel. Asian cities offer more valid templates for Manila’s future development. Both Hong Kong and Singapore point the way that Metropolitan Manila could go… and we do not need to pay Hollywood to benefit from their examples.
The two cities have been undergoing reviews of their city master plans in the last few years. Both have come up with exciting new trajectories in their urban development. They both emphasize the logic of mass transit systems over individual cars and have tweaked their infrastructure towards this. Both have seamless transit systems that integrate taxi, bus and rail transit as well as weather-protected pedestrian circulation systems so that citizens have the choice not to buy or use pollutant and costly individual cars.
Both cities have conducted stakeholder feedback sessions, planning workshops and inter-agency meetings to thresh out new or improved strategies to cope with increasing population, waste and traffic management, crime and other important quality-of-life issues.
Two recent road shows by both cities make this point very clear. One doing the rounds of ASEAN – by the Hong Kong SAR government – presents its new plans for waterfront redevelopment. With the move of the airport from Kai Tak, the Kowloon side of Hong Kong is now undergoing massive transformation. Surprisingly, it has not meant an increase in built-up areas. The citizens wanted, and are getting, more green space, parks and playgrounds. The waterfront will be edged with a wide landscaped promenade – accessible to the public at all times. (Our own planned waterfront developments are biased towards private development, with little parkland and the resulting politically incorrect segregation of classes because of "exclusive access.")
The Singapore urban planning and architecture display (unfortunately only shown in Singapore) showed new directions in its residential estates – near the city center. A competition was recently held to generate new forms of high-rise living that go over 50 stories without compromising residents’ access to amenities, proximity to green (with high-level public gardens), appreciation of heritage or sense of community.
On the larger front, Singapore is reviewing its master plan once more, in another of its five-year cycles. This time, it is increasing its public feedback and stakeholder workshops along with commissioning sociological studies to better align the physical development of the city-state to the realities of a globalizing world while still prioritizing the wishes and aspirations of its citizens.
It all boils down then to a matter of knowledge and choice. What we can learn from a Hollywood movie and the examples of progressive cities is that knowledge, and the enlightenment that comes from that, leads to making the right choices.
We all have or should have the benefit of making our choices based on correct and complete information. Metropolitan Manila may not need a maglev PRT system. Other options like mass inter-urban rail lines, articulated buses and a rationalized and integrated inter-modal system akin to those used by our neighbors show the way. We may not need imported hi-tech hardware and software; we can produce these ourselves. We may not need virtual communications, as we know our sense of community lies in daily face-to-face interaction that all Filipinos love.
Having said all this, I have to admit that what our cities and our country need is PreCrime. It would be advisable, however, and more beneficial for us, to change it to three types – PreKurakot, PreKidnap and PreCampaign. The foolishness of fellow Filipinos making plans to inflict themselves and their selfish agendas on other Filipinos is a recurring reality we all wish would go away. Being able to prevent such acts of incivility is one reality I would like to see in my lifetime … at whatever price (so long, too, as no Tom Cruise or any other actors are involved).
Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at citysensephilstar@hotmail.com.
Last week, we cruised into a scary Hollywoodized future courtesy of a review of the current blockbuster Minority Report. The moral of the film is that no matter how seemingly fixed our future is – in the eyes of trendsetters, pollsters and all kinds of futurists – we always have a choice.
We can choose not to buy the dystopic scenarios painted by them or the transnational businesses that aim to shape our future lives into unending and all-consuming consumption. We can choose to define our future lives and the cities that will be the prevalent settings for these.
This week, we continue – with a look at cities of a better tomorrow... available today – the Asian cities of Singapore and Hong Kong.
The movie Minority Report frames these interventions from a Western/American point of view: The valorization of individuality, personal transit vs. mass transit – the leitmotif of ubiquitous consumption, all those product ads. We should not take all this lock, stock and barrel. Asian cities offer more valid templates for Manila’s future development. Both Hong Kong and Singapore point the way that Metropolitan Manila could go… and we do not need to pay Hollywood to benefit from their examples.
The two cities have been undergoing reviews of their city master plans in the last few years. Both have come up with exciting new trajectories in their urban development. They both emphasize the logic of mass transit systems over individual cars and have tweaked their infrastructure towards this. Both have seamless transit systems that integrate taxi, bus and rail transit as well as weather-protected pedestrian circulation systems so that citizens have the choice not to buy or use pollutant and costly individual cars.
Both cities have conducted stakeholder feedback sessions, planning workshops and inter-agency meetings to thresh out new or improved strategies to cope with increasing population, waste and traffic management, crime and other important quality-of-life issues.
Two recent road shows by both cities make this point very clear. One doing the rounds of ASEAN – by the Hong Kong SAR government – presents its new plans for waterfront redevelopment. With the move of the airport from Kai Tak, the Kowloon side of Hong Kong is now undergoing massive transformation. Surprisingly, it has not meant an increase in built-up areas. The citizens wanted, and are getting, more green space, parks and playgrounds. The waterfront will be edged with a wide landscaped promenade – accessible to the public at all times. (Our own planned waterfront developments are biased towards private development, with little parkland and the resulting politically incorrect segregation of classes because of "exclusive access.")
The Singapore urban planning and architecture display (unfortunately only shown in Singapore) showed new directions in its residential estates – near the city center. A competition was recently held to generate new forms of high-rise living that go over 50 stories without compromising residents’ access to amenities, proximity to green (with high-level public gardens), appreciation of heritage or sense of community.
On the larger front, Singapore is reviewing its master plan once more, in another of its five-year cycles. This time, it is increasing its public feedback and stakeholder workshops along with commissioning sociological studies to better align the physical development of the city-state to the realities of a globalizing world while still prioritizing the wishes and aspirations of its citizens.
We all have or should have the benefit of making our choices based on correct and complete information. Metropolitan Manila may not need a maglev PRT system. Other options like mass inter-urban rail lines, articulated buses and a rationalized and integrated inter-modal system akin to those used by our neighbors show the way. We may not need imported hi-tech hardware and software; we can produce these ourselves. We may not need virtual communications, as we know our sense of community lies in daily face-to-face interaction that all Filipinos love.
Having said all this, I have to admit that what our cities and our country need is PreCrime. It would be advisable, however, and more beneficial for us, to change it to three types – PreKurakot, PreKidnap and PreCampaign. The foolishness of fellow Filipinos making plans to inflict themselves and their selfish agendas on other Filipinos is a recurring reality we all wish would go away. Being able to prevent such acts of incivility is one reality I would like to see in my lifetime … at whatever price (so long, too, as no Tom Cruise or any other actors are involved).
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