Urban planning ca. 2017

Exchanges among some members of the Philippine Institute of Environmental Planners up to last December highlighted concerns about “urban planning” in the country.

The apparent conclusion was that urban planning, as practiced, is flawed. It identified the larger governance milieu as part of the problem.

The exchanges focused on, among others, the formulation of the CLUP/ZO (Comprehensive Land Use Plan/Zoning Ordinance), which is a development planning document of local government units (i.e., cities and municipalities) required to be updated every five years.

It was noted that a “master development plan” (MDP) of the poblacion or the main built-up area of the LGU, which is a more detailed document on urban planning, is seldom done. The MDP would have provided details of roads and drainage to address flooding, right of way (ROW) of roads, utilities, water bodies, etc. and identified encroachment by informal settlers to address socialized housing.

The other issue on governance is political. The exchanges noted that the CLUP/MDP may be set aside (read: “ignored”) by a change in elective officials because they have their own “campaign promises to keep.” Reviewing past budgets, a participant in the exchanges reported zero implementation in the matter of road-widening in a Metro Manila city when the CLUP was updated in 2015.

Socialized housing (SH) or “low-cost” housing for the urban poor is not addressed rigorously or pursued vigorously at the LGU level. The particular concern is the lack of urban land for “on-site” socialized housing projects; the LGUs also lack a budget for land acquisition and construction. SH is definitely a subsidized, national government responsibility.

Most, and almost all, local and national SH projects consign informal settlers to remote rural places where the urban livelihood opportunities are lost. The stated reason is the high price of urban land. Consequently, the beneficiaries, being isolated from livelihood opportunities, sell their rights and return to the city to crowd the slums, again.

Another issue of socialized housing is “affordability.” Poor beneficiaries can hardly afford the ownership amortization. What was suggested in the exchanges was “rental” instead of “ownership.”

The current housing backlog is estimated to be about 5.5 million housing units. The budget for socialized housing is not likely to make a dent on it.

Except for Luneta (Rizal Park), which came about through a series of reclamation projects (starting from Taft Avenue), Metro Manila lacks parks and public open spaces for passive recreation and the green urban vegetation that provides a respite for urbanites harassed by traffic-choked commuting and air pollution. The Quezon Memorial Circle was to provide the parks in the new national capital, but the national government used it up — indicating ignorance of its vital function.

It’s still a toss-up between political will to implement the urban development plan, and update it. A number of cities in the National Capital Region—Manila, for instance — have a CLUP/ZO dating back to the 1980s, and the zoning ordinance is “updated” by “spot-zoning,” a highly arbitrary type of political exercise in planning, lending the LGU open to inefficient land use management and hidden costs.

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority still has to update its “framework plan” to guide the urbanization of its 17 LGUs. It has the planning duty to identify “urban cores” of LGUs, and, accordingly, design zoning standards that will provide spatial order to roads, structures and utilities. For instance, tall buildings along narrow streets is an invitation to a disaster when evacuation becomes an unplanned rush, in case of fire or earthquake.

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Emmanuel Ikan Astillero is a licensed environmental planner and a member of the Philippine Institute of Environmental Planners and the School of Urban-Regional Planning, University of the Philippines Diliman.