11 resolutions for Metro Manila

It’s a new year and a time for new beginnings. If the metropolis were a person, 2010 saw it making most of the mistakes of the previous year and, if fact, the last 10 years. Cyclical urban disasters, mostly manmade or exacerbated by human ineptitude, have defined Metro Manila and other urban centers in the Philippines. This year and the next decade should be a time for change.

Yes, this is a list. It is my list, as an urbanist (or more specifically a landscape urbanist) and therefore focused on physical changes. These changes, however, are dependent on basic transformations in our constructs of governance and institutions as well as the mindset of civil society.

It is a wish list for the city, so by the end of 2011, it will start to make more sense than it does now:

1

Just one word to start with—Ondoy. It has been over a year and little has changed to prevent the repercussions of climate change and irrational urban development. I fly regularly to provincial and ASEAN destinations — about once every three weeks — and I always make sure to get a window seat for the purpose of viewing the metropolis from the air. There has been little change especially in the areas struck by Ondoy. The Manggahan floodway has not been cleared. In fact, it seems to have filled back to its pre-Ondoy state.

The situation for other waterways, as evidenced from the ground (just look out your window as you pass any of Metro Manila’s esteros or creeks) is the same. Informal settlers are still living along easements and in harm’s way. There are, of course, notable exceptions like the waterway leading to the Paco Market, which was cleared by Gina Lopez and her River Warriors. But it is a small victory against overwhelming odds.

We need to ensure the future of the city for our children.

What is needed is more direct and sustained action; a difficult task given the short attention span of politicians, the general public and, yes, even media. People seem more interested in who President Aquino is dating or who Pacquiao fights next than preparing for the next disaster (and this preparation does not mean just changing the names of the agencies given the responsibilities).

2

One daily fight urbanites are drawn into is traffic; or more properly, urban transport. The stupid way we have built our cities, without a sane transport system or controlled growth, has made us invent or improvise transport systems and networks that never catch up with an ever growing metropolis.

National government agencies, police and local government never seem to talk to each other. Progressive metropolises in other countries have emphasized mass transit via LRTs, MRTs or BRTs (Bus Rapid Transit) but we still bend over backwards to accommodate an insane amount of obsolete and inefficient jeepneys, an irrational number of bus operators, an uncontrolled system of FXs, not to mention those krazy kuligligs!

Plus, the streets are an uneven patchwork of concrete and asphalt, all seemingly meant as temporary covers for nonstop utilities repair work or people desperately looking for leaks.

We should stop issuing licenses until street capacities are determined clearly. We should transfer all provincial terminals to inter-modal complexes (connected to metro-rail and secondary systems) that should be built by government or by private-public initiatives and located at peripheral sites. We should consolidate land for bus and transit stops and apply proper urban design so pedestrians can make inter-modal transfers without risk to life and limb.

3

What we also risk daily is not only the choking traffic but the choking air. You do not need multi-million-peso equipment (which government agencies continuously seem to want to purchase) to see that the metropolis is immersed in gunk. Just look out your window every morning and note that heavy brownish layer that seems to hug the whole National Capital Region. 

Cables cover our skylines in black spaghetti.

Smoke-belching public utility vehicles are everywhere in sight. How can they be given licenses or be allowed to operate every day without being caught? We know many public officials are dumb, but are they blind, too? Also of concern are not only the toxins being spewed into the air, but also the toxins professional drivers have to take to keep awake on the road.

Why can’t we do what New Delhi has done and convert all public transport to CNG (compressed natural gas)? We do have a number of taxi fleets converting to LPG but the right thing to do is to mandate that all public transport switch to this or electricity within five years and for all private vehicles to go hybrid within 10.

4

Another thing that’s choking us is garbage. I also notice this from the air, especially on landing from the Manila Bay side. The waters are clogged with garbage — the flotsam and jetsam of informal settlements, as well as unscrupulous garbage collectors who dump their collections in waterways.

The metropolis is in denial about the 7,000 tons of garbage we produce every day. The local governments surrounding Metro Manila are also in denial mode — denying us proper sties for sanitary landfills (an oxymoron given the general perception that most leak and poison ground water because they are built by the lowest bidder who have to go through a gauntlet of corruption and end up using sub-standard materials and resorting to shortcuts in construction).

Garbage collection is big business…or big corruption. Maybe this should also be privatized? Whatever the proposal, no intervention can work unless item 11 below is addressed.

5

Metropolitan pollution is not only what we breathe or smell but what we see. Visual pollution is on the rise with a metropolis increasingly buried in a tangle of overhead wires and obscured by billboards, ever increasing in size and potential danger.

Rizal Park is undergoing rehabilitation to bring people back to parks.

Most cities in progressive neighboring countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong require underground utilities. Metro Manila is strangled by more black spaghetti (cables) every day. Compounding the problem is the fact that service providers use separate poles, and few seem to keep them plumb. These cannot be safe. They visually mar the skyline and prevent pedestrian movement forcing many to use the streets to walk on. Why can’t service providers be forced to bury these lines, or use one unified pole…or even just keep them straight?

6

Billboards need their own space on this list. The problem has not been resolved since they first killed and maimed people a few years ago. The one billboard at Guadalupe (billed as the largest in the world) has seemingly run out of its lease agreement. The rusting hulk of steel is ugly to behold and may cause danger from its diminishing structural integrity if left unattended and unmaintained. One wonders, who checks the condition of all the thousands of others that continue to be used?

The safety of gigantic billboards can only be questioned in an environment where shoddy construction is the norm and inspections can be bought. The rise of high-tech billboards using LEDs and other technology over the more simple tarpaulin-based systems also imposes structural loads hundreds of times heavier and more dangerous in the event of collapse.

How can outdoor advertising be effective if we suffer from sensory overload? Studies have shown their decreased effectiveness because of this reality. I’m not for a total ban (though the cities that have shunned them have become top tourists destinations) but for management and strict control. If left to breed like viruses, they can cause traffic distractions, fall on cars and people and prevent other, more important, street signs to be read effectively

7

Crime – this is one urban problem that breeds unfettered in a physical and social environment that nurtures it. A metropolis cut up into 17 towns and cities, with dark streets, an undermanned, ill-equipped and under-trained police forces (with seemingly unclear chains of command) can only be paradise for criminals.

We should get rid of jeepneys but conserve architectural heritage like the Met.

Metro Manila is one supposedly global city where fully armed private security guards are needed to guard banks and most other businesses, gated residential enclaves and most businesses. Security is a billion-peso industry and many believe that keeping the rest of the metropolis crime-infested is part of the modus operandi of security service providers.

The overwhelming perception, too, is often hard to differentiate between criminals and the police and that it is close to useless to turn to the police when your car is hacked, your house is burgled or your cell phone snatched. It is also hard to identify the police; what with the proliferation of uniforms, vests, patches, even squad cars with illegible markings.

We dread being stopped by the police on the street for fear of being kidnapped, accosted or summarily executed for one reason or another.

I would rather that the police professionalize their ranks. We should pay them three or four times more. We could, with the money we could save from not having to pay several layers of private security that we do now. We could also CCTV the whole metropolis — the technology is now much less expensive, but of course with government bidding, the system would be a hundred times more expensive.

8

Lighting — we have a dark metropolis. Except for private districts, most of our cities are under-lit. Even if there are light posts, many are ill-maintained or local government units fail to pay Meralco. This darkness breeds traffic accidents on our streets and crime in our business and residential districts. I’ll reserve this subject for a longer article in January.

9

Parks, open spaces and street trees — we have few or none that are of any size or quantity sufficient for the needs of our selling metropolitan populace. The mark of a great city is the presence and vibrancy of its public spaces and parks. And this does not include quasi-public spaces of malls and private enclaves. Mall atria and “entertainment or lifestyle centers” of private developments are fine but they do little to engender a larger context for community. They do little also to evolve an urbanity or society that does not stratify and bias based on class or economic-status.

It is good to note that the present administration is engaged in the revival of Rizal Park (and in the interest of full disclosure, I am involved as a consultant). I hope this sparks an interest in reviving other parks and open spaces around the country much like the Luneta revival in the ‘60s and early ‘70s did. I will highlight this issue too in the months to come.

Population — yes, this is always the elephant in the room when issues of governance, economics, and now cities, are involved. City planning (or any other kind of planning for that matter) can never be done if there are factors that are difficult or cannot be managed — population is one those factors.

Population in city planning is an issue that involves density and intensity of development. It is linked to provision of basic services, mainly housing, but also including education and livelihood opportunities. Again this issue is too big to tackle in this article and I will address it or facets of its in my future articles; but it must be addressed and brought to light or it will be well nigh impossible to address our exploding urban problems.

Metro-governance — my final wish for the metropolis is for its consolidation under a unified metro-governance. The ills of Metro Manila can, in many ways, be traced to its fractured governance. It is literally (and as I’ve often written) seventeen kingdoms with seventeen kings (or queens), most of whom do not talk or even like each other, much less cooperate to address any problems. 

Floods, traffic, crime, pollution, billboards, darkness, the lack of greenery, the lack of rational city and regional planning, are all problems that do not recognize political boundaries. Metro Manila cannot be governed or find solutions to these urban problems piecemeal or without the benefit of metro-wide programs (and those that also acknowledge a regional environmental context).

Metro Manila is the only metropolitan region in Asia not governed by a metro-authority. It should be governed like a province, albeit a wholly urban one. A metro-governance here could also become a template for governance for other metro areas nationwide like Metro-Cebu, Metro-Davao and Metro-Baguio.

These are my eleven wishes for Metro Manila in 2011. I’ll be happy with three or four being addressed within the year. The metropolis, however, won’t survive the rest of the decade if the others are not addressed. If it doesn’t, then the danger is of it becoming a failed metropolis (state) where anarchy rules and the only option will be to escape it.

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at HYPERLINK “mailto:paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com” paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.