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DAVAO CITY
– Describing contemporary urban design as uncoordinated
and uncontrolled, two experts in ecology-friendly
architectural and construction planning said the
government should show its political will to regulate
and institute remedial measures to correct the mistakes
of the metropolitan cities in the country.
Jose
“Joven” F. Ignacio of the
College of
Architecture
of the University of the Philippines and Paulo Alcazaren,
the principal partner of the Paulo G. Alcazaren &
Associates Site Planning, Urban Design and Landscape
Architecture, said urban planning and construction in
both the metropolitan centers and emerging cities in the
country have become sources of environmental destruction
and increasing social disasters.
“We
already have a magnitude of Filipinos suffering from
morbidity, of diseases that have reemerged like dengue,
malaria, TB and diseases, that we can blame on the
mistakes of urban design and construction,” Alcazaren
told BusinessMirror. The two were speaking at the Holcim-sponsored
Sustainable Construction Forum.
He said
these cases of morbidity alone could be traced to human
error or a deliberate disregard for the environment like
poor drainage, improperly managed or the lack of water
system, waste disposal, dispersal of health facilities.
“Other
problems like criminality would add to the woes of
improperly managed regional plan,” he said.
Educated
in Singapore, Alcazaren thinks the Philippines should
learn the strengths of the metropolises in
Asia that he said
were being managed by a metropolitan-wide government
unit or agency. “We cannot just leave the management of
the metropolitan center to the respective mayors of the
LGUs that comprise the metropolis”.
“We need
a metro-governance to look at the entire metropolitan
region,” he said. He said the Metropolitan Manila
Development Authority (MMDA) “is like that but its power
is more than the MMDA”.
He said
local chief executives of the LGUs under the metropolis
can only look at the state of their respective areas up
to the boundaries of their town or city. “But problems
like traffic, garbage, flood, even criminality, go
beyond these boundaries.”
“We need
a government that must show its strong will to regulate
and control the errors of metropolitan design and plan,”
he said.
“The
designs of the buildings, subdivisions, facilities and
infrastructure should consider things like: are they
ecology-friendly; are the high-rise office and
condominium buildings, which are a big community in
themselves, looking at the condition and possible effect
of their design on the people around them?” Ignacio
said.
Schooled
in London, Ignacio said building designs should, at
least, consider the concept of “green construction,” or
environment-friendly construction “that would put up
those things like sewerage and water-treatment
facilities, and use the most minimal space for their
building area”.
He said
emerging cities, because they have bigger areas to
spare, often destroy the greeneries around for parking
space, for instance, “when they could have punctured a
space in the same building area without bulldozing those
extra lots in the compound”.
“Buildings and subdivisions are using a lot of space
with no more area for even a little garden,” he said.
Some
high-rise buildings, he added, “are using designs that
do not tap the advantages of nature or minimize the
effect of nature”.
“I am
not against glass buildings, but these kind of
structures use a lot of energy just to cool the inside,”
he said. “That means another pressure on the environment
to generate energy just for the cooling system of a
building which could have been designed to tap the
natural air movement or put up solar-powered facilities
to control heat and regulate use of energy.”
Many
errors of construction have continued to threaten the
viability of the emerging cities which, he rued, are
treading the same mistakes of metropolises in the
country. He said errors like improper diversion of
natural waterways to accommodate many subdivisions and
lack of waste disposal system may ultimately cost the
local governments more than what they get in taxes.
“These
things can still be remedied, but only if the government
would impose its will on the private sector, at least in
this area of urban planning,” Ignacio said. “The problem
is that property developers are not talking to each
other, nor do they care.”
“This is
a market-driven economy, and in all instances, what
supposed to have started as a careful urban and regional
plan are overtaken by speed of land speculation that
render prices of land and other real-estate properties
beyond the capability of the local government,”
Alcazaren said. “Thus, local governments are forced to
suspend some of the implementation of the construction
of important social services facilities, like sewerage,
drainage and water-treatment.”
For many
emerging cities, Alcazaren said local chief executives
and their planners were fully aware of the benefit of
planning ahead, “but because they have no money and they
are powerless against the private developers, they end
up allowing the private sector to determine the physical
development of their localities”.
What
would be fearsome, Alcazaren said, “is that the
magnitude of the people suffering and dying in the urban
centers as a consequence of poor or lack of planning has
approximated the magnitude of the number of victims in
some major disasters and calamities”.
“The
official government estimate is that the Philippines is
52 percent urban, but I would like to believe that it is
bigger, about 60 percent,” he said. |
