The need for urban renewal

Most of the existing cities in the country grew without an integrated and well thought-out plan for development. They were born from the congregation of people in a particular place without a blueprint, however, for their growth or expansion. Without a master plan to guide and direct the development of the cities, the urban centers matured in a sporadic and random fashion with no adequate zoning, organization, design or central motif. To the few that were planned out, the cities’ designs were meant for a limited population, far exceeding the over-congestion that defines our urban centers today.

Take the case of Metro Manila. With its limited space and resource, it is breaking at the seams, hard-put to provide a decent quality of life to the mass of its current 14 million population. The problems of megapolis Manila are enormous.

Already its road network is suffering from overcapacity and overuse. With its ever mounting population, basic public utilities such as water, power, mass transportation and waste disposal are severely compromised and overburdened.

Power delivery is strained to the limits with the bulk of the squatter colonies getting their electricity through illegal connections. Traffic is ever a major concern and problem despite the on-going construction of a mass railway transit system.

The problem of waste disposal is of no small concern. As early as 1998, the daily waste generation of Metro Manila was more than 6,000 tons of garbage. Of this figure, only 4,500 tons were being collected. The rest, particularly those from the squatter areas, were either illegally dumped in vacant lots or thrown into creeks and rivers such as the Pasig River, and polluting the waterways. The garbage problem stinks to high heavens.

Due to lack of an adequate drainage system, the poor maintenance of roads and the exacerbation from the squatter colonies, residents of Metro Manila experience the fiercest of floods during the rainy season. They are bound to live through bigger floods.

The growth of the urban population has exceeded the government’s capacity to provide adequate housing. Thus shanties or "barong-barongs" dot whatever space is available. The shanties sprout on public lands and even vacant titled private lands. Squatter communities abound, their shacks a tangible symbol of their utter deprivation and poverty.

As naturally, Metro Manila’s squatter colonies become the breeding grounds for criminality. The squatters, most of them unemployed, are easy recruits of the crime syndicates such as gambling, drugs, kidnapping, robbery and prostitution. There is a total breakdown of morals.

As equally rotting of its moral fiber, the old structures of Metro Manila are likewise shaking at their very foundations. Run-down and already structurally unsound, they pose a clear danger to the lives of the inhabitants, not to mention the eyesore they cast on the environs.

This illustrative case of Metro Manila is but a microcosm of the massive problems of all our other out-dated cities. To solve these enormous problems of our existing urban centers, there is a felt need to address the concern on a two-pronged front.

The first solution, obviously is to decongest the metropolis. There is therefore an urgent need to decongest the population of Metro Manila and the other urban centers all over the country and bring them to the countryside which is really the bigger portion of the country that needs to be made productive. To reverse the process into rural migration, though, the countryside must be developed so that in the process, employment opportunities are generated. If this happens, urban migrants will be enticed to relocate back permanently to the countryside.

The first order of the day, thus, is to build new towns and cities in the countryside. As apparent, though, that the need expresses itself, it is disheartening to note that government has been remiss in pursuing this most vital aspect of the solution to the headaches of the metropolitan areas, most especially Metro Manila.

The other solution to the problems of the urban centers is to embark on a program of massive urban renewal. This means refiguring the decrepit and out-dated physical structures of the city that includes the old buildings as well as the out-moded infrastructure and utilities to make way to more modern, efficient and aesthetically designed ones.

More to the point, the aged and ugly houses and buildings must be torn down to be replaced by modern high-rise structures that take advantage of the space over and above the land. While the structures of generations ago were built only as one to two storeys in the case of homes, and from three to six storeys in the case of buildings, the structures of today could be built as high skyward as the money resources of the owners permit, owing to today’s tremendous advances in the science and technology of engineering.

The remarkable advantage of a vertical thrust in building and construction is that many more people can be housed in a single structure than was the conventional concept where but one family lived in one home.

Indeed, today’s condominium homes house several hundred families in one single structure. By this manner, we are able to get rid of the so many structures and shanties cramped side by side with each other, and with no breathing room in between. The beauty of this method, on the other hand, is the releasing of more lands as open areas for greenery and gardenry, thus widening the greenbelt and breathing space of the city that adds beauty to the place as it harmonizes itself with nature.

Urban renewal, for certain, leads to the creation of better and higher values of the land which translates into better and higher taxes and revenues for government. In the end, as land is the ultimate resource, its development into its highest and best use benefits everybody, the private owner, the government and even the businessmen and workers, as land renewal offers tremendous business opportunities for the construction business as well as for the professionals and workers in this vital area of economic activity.

Without doubt, urban renewal is the name of the game as it offers and renews opportunities for better urban living.

You may write your comments/suggestions at 15/F Equitable Tower, Paseo de Roxas, Makati City or through e-mail at HYPERLINK "mailto:[email protected]"

(Editor’s note: We beg the indulgence of our readers who are at times tasked to read a lengthy piece. The purpose of our writings, however, being advocacy and not merely commentary in nature, compels us to dissect a given problem, analyze its causes and effects, and offer studied solutions. The length of the article should be irrelevant to such an approach.)