Rebuilding lives and urban planning after ‘Yolanda’

When we started organizing the National Competitiveness Council’s regional competitiveness committees last year, our first intention was to get groups mobilized on the ground to get a measure of how competitive a city or municipality was. However, we never intended for each group—we have 15 across the country—to remain focused only on data collection. After organizing the committees, we saw their potential to take on other work to build up the capacity of their regions, provinces, cities, and municipalities. Because each committee was composed of representatives of the public and private sectors in its locality—often cochaired by government and business—we considered it a catalyst for change in its community.

From among a wide range of tasks that each committee could carry out, we saw early on the necessity for better urban planning in all our key cities and municipalities. This has become more apparent given our experience with floods and typhoons. The first step was risk assessment of a place with respect to climate change, weather disturbances, and natural calamities (e.g., earthquakes, landslides, etc.). The World Wildlife Fund has undertaken a number of these assessments in recent years, supported by the BPI Foundation. WWF has now completed risk assessments for 12 cities, and the scenarios it has drawn up were accurate in at least two cities—Iloilo (Typhoon “Frank”) and Tacloban (Supertyphoon “Yolanda”). It didn’t forecast or predict the storms; it foresaw the impact.

The importance of WWF’s work cannot be overstated.  Using geohazard maps, weather and other data, WWF looks back 20 years and forward over a 30-year horizon to see what might happen as a result of natural disasters, and helps cities and towns in planning disaster mitigation. The NCC invited it to brief all our regional competitiveness committees during our last quarterly meeting as well as Metro Manila cities brought together for us by the Metro Manila Development Authority. WWF has joined us in handling briefings in Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Iloilo, and Tagaytay this month and until December to continue building up more interest in the necessity of urban planning. Next year, we plan to run more detailed training exercises for all our regional committees.

While we used to look at urban planning as a necessary tool for building up local competitiveness, the experience of Yolanda highlights its other aspects and benefits. I am happy to hear of efforts by the government for the reconstruction and recovery efforts of Yolanda-affected areas led by the National Economic and Development Authority and the Department of Public Works and Highways.

Some of the features for the planned reconstruction program are:

• Permanent resettlement areas for residents to ensure that they live outside the danger zones identified in geohazard maps.

Initially, bunk houses will be built so people can move out of tents as the permanent homes are constructed. Livelihood opportunities, along with credit and microcredit, will also need to be attended to. The business community’s help will be needed here.

• Reconstruction of public buildings (e.g., hospitals, schools, airports, ports, government offices, markets, etc.) from standardized designs which are more disaster-resilient.

Building specifications will be set to withstand the relevant risks such as wind speed, rain and flood, storm surge or earthquake (depending on location). The basic objective is to ensure that public facilities can remain operational eve after disaster strikes.

• Design and construction of all-weather, disaster-resilient public infrastructure.

In the case of roads, the common problem after Yolanda was not that roads were damaged but that they were blocked by debris such as trees, utility poles, wiring, and other materials which made passage of goods and people difficult. In the future, road design will take potential debris, floods, and other road blockage into consideration. And because the Philippines is an archipelago, ports and airports will need to undergo some adaptation as well, possibly with more airports moved away from the shoreline over the long run.

• Better land use classification, generation of more geohazard maps (and their continuous updating), and stricter adherence to the building code.

Structures not only need to be designed and built right, they also need to be built in the right place.

A good urban plan should set the foundation for this reconstruction and recovery program. But it can do that and much more. As cities and municipalities are rebuilt, it is clear that they cannot be rebuilt as they were before. In fact, some may even need to be rebuilt in new locations.

But once rebuilt, these new communities will once again grow. A good urban plan will take that into consideration and map out future needs for power and energy, water, wastewater treatment, education, public health and other social services, transportation, livelihood, heritage, and culture.

But as much as an urban plan is important, it is more urgent to move with speed. Lives have been lost and livelihoods have been shattered. We need to plan and move quickly in a way that is going to bring life back to the Yolanda-affected areas. We need to join the government in this effort of recovery and reconstruction.

Guillermo M. Luz (gm.luz@competitive.org.ph) is private-sector cochair of the National Competitiveness Council.