IT’S always been a pleasure joining and learning from an esteemed group of individuals, renowned in their respective fields, embodying a passion to help build a better, stronger and more resilient society. I always look forward to enjoying the opportunity to sit down and exchange insights and opinions with people like these about stimulating topics—like real-estate development, for example, and how we can help the country move forward in terms of building a progressive, forward-looking nation—as they help me understand something about the world that we live in from an entirely different perspective.
Case in point: A few weeks back, I was in the company of a few distinguished gentlemen from the real-estate development and the leisure boating sectors, respectively, to provide an in-depth analysis on the massive potential the Philippines’s coastlines possess, and why we have yet to really maximize these resources. Since we are in the topic of real-estate development and igniting all-inclusive growth across multiple sectors, I would like to share some of the valuable things I learned from listening to renowned Architect Felino “June” Palafox’s insightful discussion about the future of waterfront and marina development, particularly stemming from his many years at work bringing Dubai from a third-world status into one of the world’s leading cities today.
The sad truth about waterfront developments in the Philippines
Presenting his case before a handful of international delegates and resource persons in a recent speaking engagement last Friday, Architect Palafox pointed out the sad, painful truth about how Filipinos have been treating waterfront real estates, compared to how the rest of the world value it.
“Riverfronts should be front doors of economic development. Sadly, here in the Philippines, we treat riverfronts as backs of our houses—as sewers and dump sites for our garbage,” Architect Palafox lamented.
It’s a depressing fact of life that most urban Filipinos have come to ignore over the past several decades. This kind of mind-set has long derailed a number of development plans, including aims to make the Pasig River and Laguna Lake, for example, some of the most effective ways to solve the worsening vehicular-traffic situation in the entire Metro Manila.
Real-estate developers here in the Philippines could have invested substantial amount of funds to make the Manila Bay—an iconic witness to the glorious pasts of the city—a picturesque backdrop that hosts multifaceted developments that maximize the amenity value of a waterfront location, similar to how Chicago, San Francisco, the Boston Harbour, Seattle, Los Angeles, Stockholm in Sweden, and Copenhagen in Denmark proudly stand today.
Taking the meaning of ‘development’ to heart
Architect Palafox boasts of an intimidating and very impressive international master-planning experience. He was among the world’s most brilliant men who helped steer Dubai to global prominence—from merely a city sitting on a dry, idle desert, to becoming a case study for one of the most successful first-world urban development transformation the world looks up to. “For Dubai, it’s not just about protecting the environment; it’s also about enhancing the environment and developing the entire landscape to make it a more attractive investment for years to come,” Architect Palafox shared.
What the leaders of Dubai shared as a vision to experts who they contracted to develop the city in the 1970s, Architect Palafox noted, was to design Dubai as if it will not prosper because of its oil reserves. “Another thing they told us to do was to make Dubai a gateway city by building the largest ports, the biggest dry docks and the most modern airports—basically to build everything in the grandest scale possible,” he said. “Aside from this, the rulers at that time envisioned Dubai to rise as a garden desert, and to reflect the best building practices of the world and build several notches higher from there.”
Among the major projects he looked at during the time were waterfront developments—the seaport, the dry docks and a lot of marinas. “Today, investors in Dubai could even sell rooms tied to the marinas, like Burj Al Arab—a flat alone fetches $56,000 a night—to think that Dubai only had around 70 kilometers of natural waterfront,” he explained. “The rulers then thought of increasing the natural coastlines of Dubai, and so we conceptualized the Palm Islands, which spiked Dubai’s artificial waterfront by 2,000 km more.”
What’s great with waterfront real estate, Architect Palafox said, was that these precious bits of land are 50 percent higher in land value than normal real estate—even higher than golf fairway lots, which are only 35 percent higher than standard lots.
“From my years of experience building urban developments around the world, I came to the conclusion that there are certain elements that only the world’s successful cities have—“Visionary leadership, good planning [even for risks and crisis], good design, good governance and strong political will. Without any one of these, you cannot truly prosper and bring your city to where you really want it to be.”
The real challenges that really impede the progress of our cities here in the Philippines are the continued disregard for making the necessary changes to a lot of our obsolete laws. “These Jurassic laws, all of these make us less competitive globally,” Architect Palafox said. “We are staring at an enormous amount of opportunities here, but we really have to address the challenges. Indeed, we’re not making development worthy of its name unless we spread it evenly across all sectors like butter on bread.”