Megapolitan cities

PUNCHLINE
Ike Señeres

The term “Megapolitan” or “Megapolis” is so new; my word processing software does not even recognize it yet. However, those who are active in the development advocacy would immediately recognize that these words are directly related to the concept of Megacities, the emerging trend towards the morphing of already big cities into even bigger ones. It could actually be said that Megapolitan is a derivative of Metropolitan or Metropolis, but in effect it is implied that the former is bigger than the latter. Even now, most people would already know that the future “Mega Manila” is a lot bigger than the present day “Metro Manila”.

Supposedly, being a Megapolis should not be a function of size, but of efficiency. Any cluster of big cities could potentially become a Megapolis in terms of size, but if it is not going to be efficient, then it would just multiply the problems rather than unify its solutions. As it is now, human behavior and the forces of the market are causing cities to grow by way of inward migration. As the growth of these cities will cause their political boundaries to overlap with each other, it is really inevitable that the large clusters of several cities would eventually cause the emergence of Megapolitan concentrations. Hopefully, the clustering of these megacities would also be planned, but what is more imperative for them is to plan their functional efficiencies.

Conceptually, the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is a development planning agency as its name implies, and what that means is that its scope of responsibilities should go beyond traffic management and waste disposal. As it is now, the MMDA is already empowered to lead the existing cluster of cities within its jurisdiction towards the goal of planning for the future, but we do not seem to hear much from them as far as this goal is concerned. We might even say that the MMDA seems to be doing a good job as far as day to day problems are concerned, but it would be good if they could balance that as well with plans and actions to address long term opportunities.

The situation does not seem to be any better at the side of the provincial governments. According to the Local Government Code, these provinces are supposed to regularly convene their Provincial Development Councils (PDCs) in order to function as the provincial development planning bodies. Above them, the regions are also supposed to convene their Regional Development Councils (RDCs) in order to function as the regional development planning bodies, but nothing seems to be happening in that level either. This problem is complicated from the fact that chartered cities are not under the jurisdiction of the provinces, even if they should actually plan their futures together.

I hope it’s not just me, but I happen to think that the long term planning for Megapolitan cities should have a window of about a hundred years, and that is how it should be if we really want to plan ahead. The problem is, the government is planning only for the medium term, with a window of about twenty years. If that is how short the government wants to plan, they should at least extend the window to twenty four years, so that the planning period could be within the terms of four Presidents. On the other hand, long term planning should really be the job of career civil service executives, and not political appointees who come and go as Presidents change.

Again I hope it’s not just me, but I really think that in less than a hundred years, we would be able to eradicate poverty and hunger in all our Megapolitan cities, even if we would have about a dozen of these behemoths sooner or later. Over a hundred years after our Republic was born, poverty and hunger are still prevalent problems here in our country. We could come up with many reasons why that is so, but I hope that within the next hundred years at least, we would not have these problems anymore, and we should no longer accept any reason for not being able to eradicate these two problems.

Hopefully, Megapolis will become synonymous with Agropolis, because I really would like to see a balance between agriculture and development. Ideally, we should even redefine our concept of development to mean the balanced co-existence of human habitation and food production. As it is now, it is not too late to start producing food in our existing commercial, industrial and residential areas. Conversely, we could purposely build commercial, industrial and residential structures in our existing agricultural lands without totally destroying its capability to produce food.

Obviously, these Megapolitan cities could only become truly efficient if its information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure would also be well planned, and therefore pervasive and ubiquitous. What that means is that everyone should be able to access all public services from where they are, at any time, using any available device. Ideally and hopefully, the so-called “digital divide” would also be eradicated in the near future, along with poverty and hunger. We should plan to succeed, but the only way to succeed is to start planning now, in a grand manner.

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