New Year's at the Luneta

In the 1960s and ‘70s, one of the favorite places to go to during the holiday season was the Luneta. Officially known as Rizal Park since the mid-‘60s, the 60-hectare, predominantly open space was at its peak of popularity. This was mainly because it had been professionally designed (by landscape architects Dolly Perez and IP Santos — now a National Artist) and well maintained by Doroy Valencia and his team. There was also little competition from today’s malls.

I thought it would be a good idea to bring our sons to the park on the first day of the new year, to relive some memories my wife, Twink, and I had in our childhood. Okay, so maybe it was only memories of my childhood (Twink only recalls being brought to the Parks and Wildlife Center in Quezon City in the ‘70s). She, however, wanted to try out the Manila Ocean Park.

I was gung-ho for the park but was ambivalent about the oceanarium facility. I had opposed the project years ago. I believed, as many heritage conservationists did, that the structure would compromise the original design of the park, which traces its origin to the original Daniel Burnham pattern set in 1905. Perez and Santos had kept within the spirit of the original layout in the ‘60s, especially keeping the view of the priceless Manila sunset open for public enjoyment.

When we got to the Luneta, I threw away my original plan to walk around the park with my whole family, especially the little one, Juancho, who, at six years old, had not been in a large urban public park. It was wall-to-wall people! While Juancho and Twink found a leisure option at the Manila Hotel, Juancho’s kuya Wham and I braved it out in the crowd on a mission to eventually get tickets for the Ocean Park.

As a landscape architect, I wanted to see how people used the park at what was apparently its peak season. Wham took his trusty video camera to soak up material — inspiration for future experimental films he always seems to be planning.

The whole Rizal Park was filled with people. Most of the visitors were working-class families. They came as single families or whole clans complete with lolo and lola. They staked out territories on whatever patch of lawn they could find using picnic mats sold by peddlers. Those not lucky enough to find shaded corners pitched makeshift tents in the open. Spaces in between these islands of humanity were filled with kite flyers, badminton players (the game of choice, it seems, at the park) or ambulant peddlers selling a gamut of food, drink and park sundries.

They all seemed to have come to enjoy the open green space. The Luneta is one of the only open public spaces in the metropolis. It is accessible to public transport and has a variety of amenities — concert amphitheater, planetarium, National Museum, orchidarium, playgrounds, fountains and a view of the sea (at least a partial one now with the Manila Ocean Park).

Having acknowledged these, I must also point out that most of these amenities were designed and built 40 years ago with not much improvement over the last three decades, and what obviously is an increasing level of deterioration in maintenance. There is also an undeniable rise in blight in the park from what seems to be a virus of overbuilding — too many extraneous monuments, fast-food restaurants, and overwrought landscaping (the park does not have a single professional landscape architect on its staff).

A great many favorite corners of the park have disappeared or have been usurped by buildings (they should have stopped all additional building of structures in the ‘70s). The amazing Park for the Blind is now a burger joint. The Chinese and Japanese gardens are a shadow of their original selves.

The only bright spots are the National Museum and something really outside of the park but that had always impacted on it — the old Meralco Blaisdell power station towers that ruined views of the Rizal monument because they were in the background. The towers are thankfully now gone. I wonder what the government is doing with the prime riverside plot it was on? I hope they turn it into something socially meaningful like a public housing community or a public park; and not sell it to the highest bidder for yet another mall or high-end condominium complex.

Back to the park. The crush of the crowd stretched the park’s amenities to the limit. Queues at the few toilet facilities were long. Some parents just let their small kids answer the call of nature in the shrubbery. The park stank of the crowd and uncollected debris from the revelry of the night before.

Of course, the holidays are peak season but park management should cater to the increased number of visitors with additional portalets and logistical support for security, safety and hygiene. The increase in population from the ‘60s that this park was supposed to serve also warrants a redesign. The park needs to be cleared of irrelevant structures or redundant elements and brought back to its core function — that of providing green, open space.

Central Park in New York City underwent a total makeover in the ‘80s to reduce crime, increase patronage and address maintenance issues. They had a team of landscape architects and urban designers review the whole park and redo major sections of it. We should do the same with Rizal Park, plus look at how the whole metropolitan Manila could be provided with a system of large and small parks to provide leisure for its teeming millions.

Oh, and what about the oceanarium? It was okay. The displays were up to international standards. We discovered a great restaurant, Makansutra, which serves relatively authentic Singaporean and Malaysian dishes. There was a mini-mall inside and construction fences announced a future hotel.

Still, I can’t help but think that the whole complex could have been sited on another location. The present site necessitated clearing of some of the ‘60s improvements designed by Dolly Perez. The original sculptural playground designed by National Artist for Sculpture Billy Abueva is now gone. Sculptural benches that used the carabao motif have been replaced with nondescript generic urban furniture. The pedestrian promenade behind the Quirino Grandstand is now a driveway. Most regrettably, you now have to pay for a clear view of Manila Bay and its famed sunset.

We spent the first day of the new year trying to recover an experience of my childhood — that of a wonderful day at the park. What we got was two hours at a fancy commercialized aquarium and a smelly stroll through what was once a most wonderful park. I hope in this new year we find the civic will to bring back parks and open spaces, along with the good sense to place these necessary elements in a metropolis redesigned to avoid floods, rationalize urban growth and create cleaner, greener lives for all of us.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.