SIGHT OR VISION?

On: ‘Skybridge’ promises 15-minute travel from Makati to QC

- theurbanhistorian.tumlr.com

I am not sure if the author and I have the same mentor, but a similar professor of mine said the same thing. Widening the roads or creating diversion roads will not solve the problem of traffic in our cities. What we need is better transit systems. Better railway and bus systems. Traffic will increase in years to come. In spite of figures telling us that the average Filipino family has fewer budget on a regular day-to-day basis, our roads tell us otherwise. But this is beside the point. The point is that commuting every day is a hassle. And that is why we opt to use our private vehicles. Because the trains are always cluttered, as well as the buses. And there is no such thing as “Express” travel here, unless you are willing to pay for it.

Everywhere you go, there is heavy traffic. Giant major roads like EDSA and Commonwealth Ave are driven over by millions of vehicles everyday. These are long, winding, wide roads. The logic here was more roads, less traffic. But our streets are already so congested with vehicles that there is not enough space for pedestrians. The MMDA sees to it, but let’s admit it: they fail miserably. Colored walkways branch here and there, around malls, under LRT lines, over major roads. Some even have ‘BAWAL ANG TAO DITO’ signs. Well, I thought this city was created for the people. How about the daily commuters? Really now, where are our city planners?

We need a system. Just like other countries have bus and tram systems. Codes, schedules, designated stops. Our LRT/MRT and PNR systems are the only existent systems in the Metro Manila. But we could not say they are any better. Because our country is streaming with people who are stressed and aggravated on the streets. There is no room for decency. No system, no order. I say it like it’s the worst thing, but it’s just how it is.
Buses and jeeps sway all over lanes. Motorcycles zigzagged through. The motorcycle lane system has recently been established. What do we hear from the cyclists? Protests. Apparently for them, having a separate lane is much more dangerous than zigzagging around other bigger vehicles.

What we need next are bus lanes and proper stops. Garage to Terminal PUVs. Because hoards of these big four-wheelers are big pains in the a**. And our jeepneys. Boy, our jeepneys. It is still rather an important cultural icon. And I confess myself a “fan” of such icons. But like everything else in this country, we do not do it justice. We see it as a regular crime target and a road bully. Sometimes you think, what is left of it to be proud of?

Imagine this. A country with separate lanes for motorcycles, jeepneys, and buses. New and improved transit systems. Codes, schedules, designated stops. Wide and proper pedestrian pathways. Proper road landscapes. Imagine EDSA. Imagine Commonwealth. Imagine them into these scenarios. Wouldn’t you think an everyday commute would be less aggravating? Because what we see every day would actually be pleasant? And wouldn’t you feel more secure in an environment that emanates order?

Every day, we wake up to a mess. We just barely get through by tiptoeing around the mess until we get to where we want to go, or where we’re supposed to be. And the sad thing is that we don’t want to mind the mess, because we’re used to it. We’re used to a system of chaos and mismanagement. We’re used to not following the rules. We’re used to sneaking from law enforcers, especially on the streets. Because we get away with it. Because we can. Because the government’s power over us is partially nonexistent. Because we don’t believe them anymore. And we go around cursing and hating on each other. The government and the people despise each other. So where we’re headed, we never really knew. And we’re just wasting precious time and energy every day.

We need to wake up to something better. Create a system, impose it and guard it. Make it possible. We need to truly wake up and smell the coffee. Because as I see it, we just live through a reality absorbed in the grip of corruption and media. Everything else just becomes secondary. And it compromises our growth as a country.

EDSA

Every day for the past six months of this year (2011), I have been passing along EDSA on my way to work. EDSA, the historic street. EDSA, the venue of the People Power Revolution. Sadly, what remains of EDSA today are dust, dirt, and billboards.

As one passes through EDSA, by bus or any other PUV, no one would look around and enjoy the view – because there was no view, and being stuck in EDSA traffic is nowhere near enjoyable. In fact, being in EDSA is a stressful every day bout.

I, on the other hand, pass by EDSA by a private vehicle, usually with both parents. And being accustomed to looking around while on a long drive (as I am used to long drives myself), I do, as I would like to put it, assess my surroundings. And EDSA is, in my point of view, nowhere near an avenue which reflects a history, whatsoever. It is polluted, almost always traffic-jammed, and pestered by everyday commuters and men in uniform. What’s worse is that the old, uncared for buildings and the ‘new’, mindlessly designed ones are covered up by tarpaulins and gigantic billboards. No, I do not detect history in this supposedly significant street.

There has been a proposal to rename EDSA to Cory Aquino. But before EDSA, it was Highway 54, and before that 19 de Junio and McArthur Highway. Why do we keep changing streets? Why did Dewey Boulevard become Roxas Boulevard? Why did Pasay Road in EDSA become A. Arnaiz? Who is A. Arnaiz? Why did Forbes become A.H. Lacson? Who is Lacson? Honestly, I do not see the point of renaming these streets. Manila is already a very confusing place to navigate through. Why give the commuters and tourists alike another reason to not explore the city. Yes, some people do not like going to places they do not know how to go to, especially if it was an urgent meeting, and especially if the road leading to their destination would mean that they have to leave home during the wee hours of the morning. (And this is why we need more trains.)

Eyesores

EDSA is home to gigantic billboards. These billboards cover up most of the architecture left – or buildings, rather. Apparently, there is not enough architecture left in the city.

During tropical storms, these billboards have posed as threat to motorists. So they have posed new guidelines on billboards – that they use tarpaulins as to reduce damage, for some part, I assume. These billboards have been nothing but gigantic eyesores to the whole of EDSA. Instead of beautifying this dirty and dusty avenue, and improve and save buildings that align it, we cover them up with billboards: billboards with pretty and handsome faces, of toned bodies and ivory teeth.

Billboards are meant for advertisement. But really, a hearty portion of a major national road? Billboard business is business. Let’s think extra twice where we invest our money. Why not put up billboards in one specific area and not put them all over the place? This will give planners something to work with once the streets have been steered clear of these hideous billboards.

Another eyesore, and this one is not just in EDSA, is the presence of unkempt electric wires.

Other countries seem to not have this kind of problem. They have devised underground wiring systems so that their streets are wire-free. Implementation of this same system has been proposed before, but operations on such project are pricey.

WHAT ARCHITECTURE?

Looking at the buildings that these eyesores cover up, we see rarely any beauty, Our cities are somewhat how Dorothy described Kansas:

“… she could see nothing but great grey prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the ploughed land into a grey mass, with little white cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same grey color to be seen everywhere.

Except that there wasn’t an edge of sky in sight, nor grass. And sun was not the culprit – it was pollution.

Even the occasional splash of color looks grey to me. Grey and dull. Because that’s how our cities have become: unmaintained buildings and new buildings made of concrete that gather dust over time.

Our cities now have become jungles of mindless construction. There is no vision. Every building stands for itself. There is no community among these buildings. One building alone may be aesthetically pleasant, but it does not necessarily beautify all those around it.

There is no careful planning of the cities anymore. We just build and build. All is for business, for profit. Beauty? Who said anything about that?

Old buildings have gone to waste. Who would want to use an old, dilapidated wooden house anyway?

WHAT THE PROBLEM IS

The problem is we fail to see what we already have. We always tend to look forward and beyond, but we do not want to look closely.

If we had to blame anyone or anything, we can always blame WWII.

We had wonderfully planned cities and streets before the WWII. Roads were wide, there were designated bike lanes and pedestrian walkways (that are not hindered by supposed “front gardens”), transit systems and bus systems and orderly and peaceful neighborhoods. The war destroyed almost everything that has been built and cultivated, and we were left to rise from the ashes.

WHAT THE REAL PROBLEM IS

The thing is, there will be adversity in the world. And how we bloom from that adversity is what will define us. Sadly, We did not rise up from this downfall as a solid nation. This was where we saw rise of power of the oligarchs, and the corruption began (or worsened). Another thing was that we Filipinos are so used to tingi-tingi­.­ We do not want the whole package, it’s too expensive. Let’s work with what we can afford for now.

Because there was no carefully constructed plan.

What followed after the war? The Marcos Regime.

Marcos and yet Another Downfall

The Marcos Regime had built the CCP, PICC, among others. Imelda was the one who commissioned Locsin to build the Manila Film Center and revive the Manila Metropolitan Theater. They wanted to invest in cultural development and awareness. Aside from this, Marcos had built the Heart and Lung Centers, among others. He was making good. But sadly, a corrupted mind cannot simply push through. There was an uprising, and we had to rise again from another downfall.

From thereon, beautifying our cities and boulevards were not a major concern. It was show business, politics and crime that interest us. Road improvements? We hate these? Bakit ba nila sinisira, maayos na naman ‘to a? No dear, this is far from fixed.

Lost and Forgotten Treasures

Where has Daniel Burnham’s plan for Manila gone?

There is no clear constructed city plan for the present Manila. Everything is built the way they are because they are bought the way they are – parcels of land, good for investment. Then concrete buildings are built. The business goes down. The building is left uncared for. And we have streets of this. Apparently, we have a knack at abandoning buildings – and building new ones instead.

We have no reverence to how are buildings are made, and why.

What used to be a carefully constructed city has turned into a city of concretes and dilapidated oldies.

Dilapidated Oldies

Currently, we only have Vigan and Intramuros, among others, which we may call as ‘historic towns’. These towns have preserved their heritage through implementation of rules and restrictions to building demolition, construction and restoration. The opposite could be seen outside of these towns – where old is ugly and new is supposedly better.

If only this kind of preservation and heritage awareness was carried out throughout the whole country, with height restrictions given to towns and districts (in short, a clear constructed plan of our cities) then Manila would not look so much like a wasteland of concretes. There seemed to be lack of control as to who owned the lands and what was done to these lands.

City of Concretes

Take SM, for example. The SM malls do not much have any aesthetic appeal – the designs of these malls were profit-oriented: square- or rectangular- shaped, with a big ‘SM’ at the façade. It was only recently that the designs were upgraded to throw some improvement somewhere. These buildings, among others, are just big blocks of concrete with some glass curtains. And these concrete blocks are bound by concrete pavements of parking lots. Instead of developing these parking lots for open green spaces, they have been allotted for parking spaces. And trees were made to suffer paved soil.

And then we ask why the flooding has gotten worse.

The real problem is, the original purpose in the creation of these cities have long been forgotten. We only see problems which we see now, that have piled up the problems that we had in the past. The damage has become so severe that it will take a lot of time to repair.

We have lost our once meticulous taste in beauty: because our standards have gotten so low and pitiful. When we tried to rebuild our cities, the change we wanted was not to beautify, but to prosper in wealth. But this kind of equation is not healthy. Quality control phased out.

So what do we need now?

We need green open spaces. We need parks. We need to introduce historic preservation and restoration to curriculum. We need to be educated. We need to know.

We hear of humanitarian movements, and animal welfare societies. But do we know that we also have heritage conservationists? urban planners and specialists? We need to be informed in order to get involved. The first step to action is information. After all, those who truly understand art and aesthetics are those who truly grasp the power that they possess.

This was Manila before: lively, vibrant, promising.

Luneta Park

Photo from Paulo Alcazaren

Looking at Manila now, I could only think of 4 Ds to describe it: dull, dark, dirty and depressing. I could even add a 5^th: dangerous. We all ask: Why? I have a few guesses:

1 – Failure to realize how our cities were originally intended to be

Decades, even centuries before our generation was born, our cities had “Master Plans” which were carefully thought-out by our then-highly esteemed planners and architects (but of course, we could not deny the “push” we had from our colonizers, as well as their influence and first-hand contribution.) Manila’s original Master Plan was designed by Daniel Burnham (yes, the same Burnham which the Burnham Park was named after, and the one who also designed what was supposed to be Baguio City.) Alas, like Baguio, this Master Plan was realized only to an extent. He had envisioned our avenues and boulevards to be “like Paris’” and our canals to be “like that of Venice’s”. Only, this plan was obviously scratched due to the growing number of informal settlers that lined our rivers (Pasig River being the more popular), polluting our cities’ supposed treasures. Marikina similarly had a Master Plan, deeming its streams with large easements to allow for flooding. Also, the city was to have a limited development due to its location. Because, as you may have guessed, it stood on a fault line. Again, this plan was obviously not realized as housing developments are abundant in the city today. There was the Marikina River and the fault line to begin with, therefore Marikina was not fit or even recommended for residential developments. So again we ask: Why? And further: Who’s at fault? (No pun intended.)

This is not just Manila and Marikina. The list goes on.

2 – Failure to maintain the ways of getting around (An excuse for lack of discipline)

 We used to have a very pleasing boulevard lined with lush greens bordering the (cleaner) bay. We used to have better transport systems, like the tranvias/trams (or train systems/cable cars at street level with less smoke-inducing engines, later run by electricity), or the double decker buses called the Love Bus (alive on the streets during the Marcos Era, which took up more capacity and less street space), to name a few. We could compare these transport systems with our LRT and MRT, whose lines entirely darkened our streets and blocked vistas and views of the buildings lining them. And of course, our buses: Who among us have experienced riding the bus in the morning between 6-7am or at the afternoon between 4-7pm (during rush hours) and experienced “standing” all the way to a third of your journey? And what’s more, you are being asked to make way for more standing passengers. I know these lines are familiar to you:

At the jeepney/FX: “Konting ipit lang ho!”

At the bus: “Konting usog lang ho dyan sa dulo!” / “Kawawa naman yung mga nasa unahan!”

Eh kung ‘wag na kaya kayo magpasakay nang walang kawawa?

But of course, we are used to this. It’s saddening, and at times, disheartening even. But of course, most especially during rush hour, we all only just want to “get there”, though at times, forgetting all manner and discipline. Look at our LRTs/MRTs. Once the train doors open, people rush in quite violently sometimes that people getting off find it very frustrating and maddening. A friend once posted as her Facebook status (after having experienced a bad MRT encounter): “Fight Filipino ignorance and selfishness!!! Bangon Pilipinas! Kahit sa MRT man lang.” And then there’s still a whole new topic on bus and jeepney drivers that I shall leave to your discretion.

We once had an educational trip to Hongkong. Even in riding the escalators, people had discipline. Before getting on, people get in line properly and they stand to the right side to allow people rushing/running to use the left side. Same goes with Hongkong transit systems. They are very well-organized, that getting around Hongkong is leisurely and nowhere near stressful. I didn’t want to compare, honestly. But if only we had this kind of discipline (and convenient transport systems to match) in the Philippines, then commuting wouldn’t be much of a chore. We once had those before, but we only ask again: What happened?

3 – Failure to maintain and sustain our heritage

Our parents and grandparents had better reverence to the craft of our national artists. They put more value in culture and art. Thus, they have enjoyed the perks of taking long, leisurely walks at clean parks, attending free concerts at the park, visiting the local museum, or seeing a play or stage drama at the local theater (CCP or Met, for the more privileged and upscale citizens and denizens alike.) Yes, this all sounds very European. But this was Philippines before. We used to enjoy physical activities, ones that require more than using your fingers. We used to involve ourselves in activities which stimulate all the five senses, unlike the digital and modern imitations and convenient-and-user-friendly gadgets we have today. We used to move around a lot, and prefer to be out than in. Before, being confined in a single space, with little movement all day only meant one thing: working in an office (or office-bound, for lack of a better term.)

We are always inside or always rushing to places, that we fail to see the current state of our cities. If we take time to look around while riding a public transport or riding as passenger in a friend’s car, we will see what’s left of how Manila once was. And the few buildings which continually try to stand strong are being targeted for demolition for ‘development’ and ‘progress’. (Remember the Jai Alai building?) “To build you a better city”, they say. But do they really know how it was then? Our cities were once pristine! Yet of course, the war happened. And we went through a depression. But if only we (or those of power and privilege to rebuild our cities) had better, informed choices in putting the country back in order, then, well, we can only imagine what the Philippines might be like.

Nevertheless, I am, and will always be, a proud Filipino and Manileña. I merely revere the Old Manila and Philippines, of how things were beautiful and how we could have saved it. If only we valued our heritage more. If only we approached progress simultaneously with the plan to sustain and maintain our culture and heritage.

Sources: Lectures, posts and published works by Arch. Paulo Alcazaren and Arch. Manuel Maximo Lopez del Castillo Noche

Disclaimer: The photo(s) is/are not mine. Taken from Arch. Paulo Alcazaren’s Facebook Page