PUNCHLINE
Ike Señeres
At a recent meeting of
the Corinthian Coffee Clutch (C3), we had the good fortune of top architect Jun
Palafox joining us. Jun is actually a member of C3, but his projects here and
abroad have prevented him from attending regularly. It was a good time for Jun
to attend, as we talked about the long term planning of megacities in general
and environmental sustainability in particular.
Although he is
generally known to be primarily an architect, it was no surprise to everyone in
the meeting when he started talking about graft and corruption, and how it
affects national development, particularly as it applies to the construction of
built environments.
Hearing Jun is like
taking a roller coaster ride, as we were inspired by what good planning could
do in improving the quality of life in our cities, and yet we were also
depressed by the fact that for the most part, the awareness of good planning
has apparently not entered the consciousness of our government planners. Among
the many concepts that he discussed, I liked best his proposal to make our
cities more liveable by making them walk-able and bike-able.
What is surprising is
what he said nonchalantly that walking is a means of transportation, and the
government is apparently not aware of that either.
Jun actually mentioned
several good suggestions, but among what he said, I remember most five topics,
namely (1) the remediation of flood prone areas so that these could become high
value human settlements, (2) the construction of mega buildings that could go
as high as three kilometres, (3) the selling of air rights over lower
buildings, (4) the integration of plants and flowers in the vertical design of
buildings and (5) the evolution of “Agropolitan” megacities, a
term so new that my word processing software could not even recognize it.
As I understand it, an
“Agropolis” is a megacity wherein there is a good balance between
agriculture (green) and the built environment (blue) and so I also took the
opportunity to talk about my green and blue advocacy. As we have seen it happen
for many years already, farmlands are destroyed as subdivisions and commercial
buildings are built over them.
As Jun was explaining
it, it is actually possible to make both agriculture and architecture coexist,
and by doing so, the resulting settlements would not only be liveable, these
would also be sustainable especially when it comes to food security.
As Eleanor Roosevelt
had said, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; and small
minds discuss people”. That is precisely what we are trying to do at C3, to
gather great minds as much as possible, as much as they are willing to help, so
that we could discuss ideas that would be good for the nation. In doing so, we would like to think
that we are functioning as a private think tank for nation building, sincerely
wishing and hoping as well that we could be given the chance to share our ideas
with the government, elected politicians and career bureaucrats alike.
Perhaps it could be
said that some politicians only have average minds because they could only
discuss events. We see this whenever some politicians would react only to
current events as these are mentioned in the news, after that, we do not hear
from them again, as if the subject matter has gone out of fashion. The bottom
line here is that many local government units (LGUs) do not even have land use
plans, more so the Municipal Development Plans (MDPs) that are required of them
as an output of their Municipal Development Coordinating Councils (MDCCs).
Looking at it another
way, the relocation of flood victims are just events that any politician with
an average mind could do. Beyond that however, we need ideas so that we could
build long terms solutions to the problem of disaster risks, and that is where
we need great minds to deal with these problems.
Being the businessman
that he is aside from just being an architect, Jun understands very well that
these problems could not only be solved, the solutions could also create
opportunities as land values would go up and the local economies would also
improve.
As I understand it,
the government is focusing more on medium term planning, rather than long term
planning. That means that presently, the government is unable to look beyond
twenty years as far as planning is concerned. Actually, it is difficult for the
government to plan beyond six years, because that is only how long a
presidential term is. That is also the reason why our government planners could
hardly look at the long term, because their term is only short, coterminous
only with their appointing authority.
In order to prepare
for the eventual emergence of megacities, we really have to plan ahead for more
than twenty years, even better if we could plan ahead for forty or sixty years.
In order to do that however, we need to bring back the career undersecretaries,
assistant secretaries and directors in the line departments, because only the
career officials are capable of planning ahead for many years, without being
cut short by term limits that are politically motivated. In short, we should
really insulate our career planners from political influence, if we really want
a well planned future.
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