Nuances of urban density

Part 3

– To be or not to be

In creating living spaces, contemporary thinking has always been to have as much free and open space as possible. This was the essence of suburban living in the US in the middle of the last century – unfenced spacious bungalows with well-manicured lawns, wide streets where residents can drive, walk, jog, or bike. The horizon flat, unfettered by structures with the sunset peering through the trees. In other words, low densities. Compare this with the tightly-packed high-rises of Hong Kong or the medium height flats of London and you see what I mean.

On a wider city or country scale, we can encounter this concept in the terms, “decentralization” or “devolution” or “dispersal” or the like, which simply wishes to spread out population over a wider area. In our case, we call this countryside development or the novel concept of “promdi” (“from the province”) which encourages development all over the country, not just in Metro Manila. But that was just the initial goal, really, to arrest the migration of people from all over the country to the capital, where the jobs were. But the phenomenon is likewise replicated in the case of Metro Cebu and some other metropolitan centers.

This intention is the main driver for the building of Clark, for example, and the byline is always “build Clark to decongest Manila.” There is a missing explanation somewhere, because congestion is not properly defined and often left to the choice of the readers which almost always refer this to “traffic congestion.” While there may be a connection between the number of the population and the number of vehicles or trips, congested traffic doesn’t necessarily mean undesirable urban densities. In fact, there are many other cities denser than Manila or Cebu which have better mobility and also better traffic.

Building Clark, or any new city for that matter, with the purpose of decongesting an old city like Manila, will not work – the same woes will ail both the new city and make the old one worse, because trips would have multiplied. While planner might hope that people will transfer to the new city, most won’t, creating more and longer work trips per day, while new entrants might want to live in the new city but still find work in the old one. Traffic will worsen.

The original idea for cities is concentration and densification to make all systems more efficient. A kilometer of power line or a water line serving 200 households in the city is 20 times more efficient that the same serving 10 households in the rural areas, which will drastically bring down costs, which in turn will encourage more economic production creating jobs. It’s a self-feeding improvement system when handled properly which has resulted in the general irreversible migration of the world’s population to cities in the last century. Building new cities to decongest old ones never worked. Not in Brasilia, Tsukuba, or Canberra. And it won’t in Naypyitaw or Clark. (To be continued)