Urban Matters
Furnishing the Streets
IT’S another hot day and the urge to drink strikes as you walk about the city. You stop at a nearby shop and purchase a bottle of water, which you’ve finished before you’ve even walked one block. Unfortunately, you’re now stuck with an empty bottle. You could keep it to refill later, but maybe you already have a collection of empty water bottles and you want to recycle this one.
If you’re walking through Metro Iloilo, you are probably stuck. There is an unfortunate lack of public waste and recycling bins on the sidewalks of the city, and this can result in frustrated people and litter about the city.
‘Malling’ consumes shoppers in the Philippines
THE Philippines has three of the world’s 10 largest shopping centers, two of them in the capital, Manila. Scores of others, ranging from modern glass and steel structures to older, fading buildings, dot cities across the archipelago.
Although over 40 percent of the country’s 90 million people live on $2 or less per day, malls here are crowded at all times, and especially packed at weekends.
Around 80 percent of the Philippines’ population go to shopping centers and around 36 million people visit shopping plazas once or twice a month, according to Nielsen Media Research.
When Public Becomes Private
FOR better or worse, we live in a world where money talks. This fact not only relates to the business world, but also to municipal government, where the allocation of funds to certain projects often means a lack of funding to others. Compared to large corporations, governments - especially municipal governments - have much less money than they need to fund the social services that are their responsibility. In urban environments, these problems are literally made concrete before our very eyes.
Recently, Megaworld offered to pay for the construction of the New Iloilo City Hall in Mandurriao, by the old airport. While this development is worthy of applause, we should always be wary of the degree to which we allow private interests to shape the public realm. This is not to suggest that all private companies have bad intentions - they don’t - but because of the nature of economics, their primary concern is for their own bottom line, not for what is most beneficial to the public.
Spokes and the City
GETTING around the city is something all of us have to do in our daily lives. Whether we’re commuting to work, shopping for food, or simply going to met friends, we all have to travel some distance every day.
This is an easy task for those who own a car; one simply has to get behind the driver’s seat, navigate traffic, and arrive at a destination. Of course, these trips are now getting more and more expensive as the price of gas rises. To make matters more complicated, emissions from private cars are often cited as one of the driving forces behind climate change.
For those without cars, the main mode of transportation is the jeepney. In terms of convenience, these trips are second to taking a car, since one often has to take multiple routes or combine rides with walking in order to reach his or her destination. Just as with private cars, the costs associated with riding the jeep are rising, too - in the last year, the fare to ride the jeep has risen one peso, an increase of 14%. And, of course, jeeps also emit the same emissions that cars do, meaning they also have a negative effect on the environment.
Urban Waterfronts: The Wave of the Future
LOOKING into a calm body of water, we often see our reflection staring back us. In the urban environment, however, we have developed the land around the water so much that it is virtually impossible to do so. As we distance ourselves from the water, we lose our ability to see ourselves reflected in the natural world, and, in so doing, run the risk of forgetting our connection to it altogether.
Waterfronts are much more than natural mirrors, of course: as an element of the public realm, they are places of recreation and social interaction that can make a city a beautiful and welcoming place for both its inhabitants and visitors. A people-friendly waterfront invites investment as well, improving the lot of all city residents.
Directional Railings: Good or Bad?
THE Iloilo City Traffic Management and Engineering Unit installed directional railings along the Diversion Road supposedly to ease traffic in U-turn areas. But a number of jeepney and taxi drivers are complaining because, according to them, instead of making the flow of traffic smooth, it creates a bottleneck as not all vehicles are making U-turns in these areas. Only one lane is left to be shared by the many who are heading straight, thus clogging the road.
Breaking Free From the Concrete Prison
THE 1984 film Ghostbusters contains a scene in which two dog-like statues come to life. The monsters burst from their concrete shells, roar into the night, and leap off in search of humans hosts to possess. The ensuing relationship between the demons and their human hosts is parasitic, with the demons benefitting while the humans become their slaves.
The metamorphosis of the natural world into urban regions mirrors this transformation, only in reverse. Humans have imprisoned living entities in concrete, abandoning the symbiotic relationship that benefits both us and the planet. As opposed to the film, the real-world parasite is not that which has been imprisoned, but rather those doing the imprisoning: human beings.
Walking Into A Greener Future
A SIMPLE walk from my office to the nearest mall usually involves a delicate ballet of side-stepping cars parked on the sidewalk, sneaking around utility poles, ducking shopfronts, walking around restaurant picnic tables, passing through gaps in the barbed-wire fenced medians, and, of course, avoiding jeepneys, tricycles, and trisikads. It’s an obstacle-course of survival challenge, and that’s just in the first block.
It doesn’t need to be this way. The public realm in all its aspects - transit, parks, plazas, roads, and sidewalks - ought to be to planned first and foremost for the pedestrian experience. Not everyone drives, but everyone is a pedestrian, at least at some point during the day.
CA upholds circulars on billboards
THE Court of Appeals (CA) has affirmed the legality of two circulars issued by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) imposing additional standards and regulations in the construction and maintenance of advertising billboards as an offshoot of Typhoon Milenyo’s onslaught two years ago.
DPWH Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. has issued National Building Code Development Office Memorandum (NBCDO) Circulars 5, Series of 2006 and 2, Series of 2007, pursuant to President Arroyo’s Administrative Order 160, directing the department to conduct inspections, assessments and dismantling of billboards posing imminent danger to life and property.
Rehab or Perish
By Ben Jimena
THESE DAYS, when you go around Iloilo City, most likely you would not miss the dumps along the road which just pile up day after day and the smell that lingers, becoming more putrid every time rains come. Of course, the garbage and lumps of earth by the road get collected regularly but people kept on bringing out the remaining trash and sludge from their houses that the job of hauling them to the dumping ground seems endless. It was almost a month after the floods, but the rotting odor has tarried – a pellucid reminder of the killer water.
The city has already done a lot of cleaning up – flushing the sludge, unclogging the drain, deodorizing the rot, sanitizing the rubbish. Immediately after the water has started to subside, the city has mobilized relief operations – setting up of 32 evacuation centers, gathering from the good Samaritans and distributing to the calamity victims food, water, clothes and medicine, and installing water treatment machines; debriefing the victims and the concerned government and private institutions; and assessing the havoc.
Urban Resources
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Leadership Series
Download here UPPP's Leadership Series, a learning tool for policy makers to promote understanding of pressing urban issues and encourage policy actions for urban sustainability. (more...) * -
Bangon Iloilo
Please visit the Bangon Iloilo website at www.bangoniloilo.com. * -
Executive Order No. 712
Here is the full text of Executive Order No. 712 ordering a review of LGU traffic rules. (more...) * -
Report of the Coal Fired Power Plant Evaluation Task Force
NOW AVAILABLE for download is the 32-page report of the Coal Fired Power Plant Evaluation Task Force created by Mayor Jerry Treñas to study the plans of the project proponent, Panay Power Corporation and its partner Formosa Heavy Industries (FHI) of Taiwan. (more...) * -
What you need to know about Guisi
EARNING around 70 pesos a day from the dwindling yield of the sea and from the tedious process of making charcoal isn’t really enough for every family of Barangay Dolores, a coastal village in the town of Nueva Valencia and is found in the southwestern-most tip of Guimaras Island in central Philippines. Perhaps, the community just simply wants to be true to its name, which in English means “pains.” (more...) * -
Anti-Coal Videos on YouTube
These videos were produced by the Responsible Ilonggos for Sustainable Energy (more...) * -
Speech of UNDP Deputy Resident Representative Kyo Naka during the launching of the Guisi Discovery Quest
ON BEHALF of Nileema Noble, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, I wish to make a short message on the occasion of the launch of the Guisi Discovery Quest Project. It is such a pleasure to visit this beautiful province which serves as the gateway to one of the most important regions of the Philippines, Region 6. (more...) * - Read more posts...
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