How green is Nuvali

Green is in. It is the color of sustainable development and the catch-all term used to define an approach to building new towns, cities, communities and new lives. Filipinos have been green for eons before recorded history.

Then, we were relatively small, mostly coastal communities scattered across few of the 7,100 islands of the archipelago, living off the bounty of the sea and some of the hinterland accessed by rivers. The biggest communities grew where the largest rivers accessed deep inside, in fertile plains and lush valleys. There, additional settlements rose up to process the transfer of resources from the inland areas to the primary coastal settlements.

The largest of these settlements came to evolve into Manila. Through the Pasig River, the settlements inland on the banks of Laguna de Bai were the likes of Sta. Rosa and Calamba. In the 18th and 19th centuries the areas adjacent to these towns were cultivated to various economic crops like rice and sugar.

Manila And Its Latifundia

Manila and its population grew in the Spanish era into the American one. The city’s growth was fueled by its latifundia, the area from which resources were harvested to sustain the needs of the city and its people. Inland resources were along the lake with its adjacent agricultural areas fed by the valleys and ridges leading up to Tagaytay.

Laguna was well known for its rich natural resources. It had and still has a robust watershed fed by a geomorphological system that collects rainwater into creeks, ponds and underground aquifers relatively camouflaged by the greenness of the valleys of sections like the area between Canlubang and Tagaytay.

Today we call this latifundia part of the “carbon footprint” of the primary metropolis of Metro Manila. The metropolis itself has expanded beyond the wildest dreams of early Filipinos. Today’s urbanite lives in a city (or rather a group of cities) with 10 million souls. Most Philippine urbanites, save for those living and working in planned sections of Metro Manila like modern Makati and Bonifacio Global City, or Cebu Business Park in Cebu, live in crowded conditions in former suburban enclaves that are now highly urbanized. The quality of lives and communities in these crowded sections are compromised by unmitigated blight and uncontrolled development.

The building of planned communities falls mostly now in the hands of private enterprise. Only a few, notably Ayala Land, have taken a longer-range view and strategy of smart growth — carefully-nurtured development of well-located and infrastructure-serviced districts.

Unlike most developers prior to their ascendance, they did not just cut up the land to sell pieces like the proverbial roll of salami. They made sure that all real estate bought from them was part of an area that had roads, sewers, water and power. They made sure that planning regulations were followed and that structures built on these properties followed a strict land-use zoning and relationships with adjacent properties. All these ensured the continued and constant rise in value of any property developed by them. This is true of Ayala Land’s flagship projects in Makati and Bonifacio Global City as well as in Cebu Business Park in Cebu.

Heading South To The Valley Of Dreams

The evolution of Manila, or rather the devolution of the rest of Manila, had led Ayala Land, among other private developers, to venture south of the metropolis in search of green fields from which to yield land that could be developed for housing and commercial purposes.

Many of these developments immediately south of Metro Manila took the normal cut-and-sell paradigm with little to show for sustained urban or suburban life in terms of water, transport access, or leisure amenities. Some of these developments are called subdivisions, a term which defines them accurately in terms of their form and the fact that lives there are chopped up into prison-like modules, ringed by a warren-like system of roads, and weakly served by the barest of basic needs of water, security or open green space.

Ayala Land eschewed this approach to its development of Alabang, which had grown based on a carefully planned physical development fed by amenities, infrastructure and services. Now, the company is taking the lessons learned from this, along with the larger lessons culled from the developments of Makati and Bonifacio Global City, for their grandest project so far— Nuvali, a complete and completely-green large-scale, master-planned community for the new century.

Old Latifundia, New Community

The site is the old latifundia of Canlubang and Sta. Rosa; where the greenest spreads south of Manila are. The 1,700 hectare site possesses some of the most panoramic views of Manila north of it, along with the regions best naturally-nurturing in terms of clean water, clear air, cooler temperatures and flora and fauna closest to the original state compared to any in the National Capital Region.

This resource and natural base provides the tabula rasa, or open-ended opportunity for the sites planners to make sure that the balance of life lost in most of Metro Manila will be recovered here. Wide open green spaces define most of the planned sectors of Nuvali. Commercial, institutional, business and shopping districts are clustered in campus-like settings more green than any in the metro.

The functional master planning vision of Nuvali is that of a regional satellite city essentially and efficiently linked to Metro Manila but structurally independent and supremely more environmentally sustainable that most of the present conurbation of cities that define the metropolis.

Because the large site is contained within Nuvali’s planning area, infrastructure can be planned and a good portion already built that is rational, comprehensive and yet flexible enough to allow for change in the future. Avenue and road sytems have been integrated with the large South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) and other highway systems connecting points north and south.

Inside the site sewage treatment, water distribution, power supply and communications are all state of the art. Large lakes and bodies of water have already been built or are planned to help harvest rain water, conserve resources and provide visual amenity for future residents and visitors.

A Sustainable Choice, A Green Life In A New Valley

Nuvali’s development will take three major frames of sustainability. Not only is the environmental sustainability a priority but so, too, the project’s economic and social sustainability. Here, Ayala Land has learned from 50 years of innovation in commercial residential and purpose-built development. Imagine the successes of Makati, Bonifacio Global City, Alabang and other projects like Cebu Business Park serving as the basis for the crafting of a template that ensures this three-point approach to an environmentally-sustainable, economically viable, socially-enriching environment.

Unlike most master-planned developments, which prioritize infrastructure within the development, Nuvali takes into consideration the environment of the development.  With such considerations as water supply, bird sanctuary, surrounding community, access and the like, Nuvali seeks to push the envelope for sustainable design. 

Unlike other developers whose priority is to maximize saleable land, Nuvali was deliberately planned with a commitment to 50 percent open space.  From a financial point-of-view this is not the most profitable option, but from the Nuvali perspective, this is the best for the overall health of nature and people. This is to pursue the goal of creating a setting where people and nature co-exist. Exemplifying this goal are elements already ready or being built, like Nuvali’s Outdoor Adventure area for hiking amidst natural scenery and landscape. Nature and environmental-friendliness is also seen in the provision of bike and pedestrian lanes. Nuvali is also the only master-planned development with a working dual-piping system already in place, plus commuter systems encouraging the use of alternative transport.

Ultimately, Nuvali will rise to become the epitome of proper community development in the Philippines. Going to the site (and I suggest that to see is to believe) one is struck by the fact that the developers have walked the walk, not just talked the talk. There is no place for hype here as visitors will reel not from the spin of press releases but by the possibilities of a good life in an idealized setting. At the end of the day, Ayala Land plans not only the land, but the lives and lifestyles of the residents in and around the development site. 

The beauty of Nuvali’s proposition is that of choice. This new city gives one the option of returning to a way of life we Filipinos treasured eons ago: a life of balance, a life where work, residence and recreation is melded holistically, a life in a setting green, expansive, clean and engaging, a life you’ve always wanted to choose. Now is the chance.

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This is the 11th article in a 12-part series in The Philippine STAR in collaboration with Ayala Land. “Perspectives” chronicles the success formula of urban development and progress, and gives readers a glimpse of the important elements in community development.