PHILSSA - The Future of Philippine Cities, with NGOs Leading the Way

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THE FUTURE OF PHILIPPINE CITIES, WITH NGOs LEADING THE WAY

By: Anna Maria M. Gonzales

I was working on the final draft of the "Future of Cities" document when two commercial airplanes destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. My immediate thoughts (other than incredulity, that is) were, "oh no, what will happen to the future of cities project now? Pinoys will find more reason NOT to want compact cities and multistory housing!"

After a few reflective days, however, I calmed down and realized that in the wake of such a catastrophe, thinking seriously about cities is now even more necessary and timely. Moreover, while Philippine cities definitely have the symptoms, trappings and some of the structures of American cities, our position in the global scheme of things and our cities’ specific histories will not necessarily arouse the same kind of virulence that the World Trade Center experienced.

Of course, any large settlement with a considerable concentration of population is vulnerable to risks of large-scale accidents, epidemics and yes, terrorism. In fact, forms of terrorism are very potent as combat strategies against established orders because of urbanization and the resultant concentrations of population and infrastructure.

Last year’s LRT bombings and mall bomb explosions in the Philippines are part of an informal kind of warfare that may or may not have come from the usual suspects. Because cities and urban areas are permeable and so easy to hide in, it is equally easy for anyone with enough resources and political motivation to hurt large numbers of people as it is for organized groups of rebels.

Metro Manila and other Philippine cities are definitely vulnerable to biological warfare and other vicious tactics designed to maim a large number of people in a short period of time. Metro Manila’s crowded and unsanitary conditions and its tropical climate make it so vulnerable to many forms of bacteria, and therefore to anyone or any group sufficiently motivated enough to hurt innocent people, including perhaps their own relatives. (I am sure pundits will ask me if I am talking about our garbage collection system, or lack thereof.)

But is the new global situation reason enough to be cynical about cities? Or should this be the time to seriously think about them, their reasons for existence and their future trajectories? I hope more people choose the second path. It is definitely because of what has happened in New York and in Washington, D.C. that we, as former U.S. colony —and continuing mental colony, judging by how our officials are stumbling all over each other trying to impress the US government so that we can be recipients of military aid— must seriously reflect on what we are doing to our cities and our own countryside.

That New York is a city is NOT the fundamental reason why it was attacked. The World Trade Center was an easy target because of its geographical location and its design. (Who can miss a building 114 stories high?) The WTC was attacked because of the way the US federal government(s) has been conducting itself in the world of nations in the past century. U.S. policy and practice have produced enough dictators, impoverished conditions, terrorism and counterterrorism (formerly in the name of anticommunism) that it was really only a matter of time until a group of people would be desperate enough, motivated enough and trained enough to turn against the masters who might have trained them in the first place, as was the case of the Taliban. If the World Trade Center were not prominent enough, the attackers would have found another way to wreak their own vision of destruction on the hapless American public.

If cities in the Philippines fail and become unlivable at some future point, it will not be because they are cities in the first place. It will be because people in them have not recognized that in each city, there is a potential for people to come together easily to help each other in an increasingly populous world. If our future cities fail or if they attract the kind of virulence that New York has experienced, it will most probably be because we have allowed our leaders to oppress others in our name. In the Philippine context that will be because we have allowed our political leaders to disrespect others who are different from us Metro Manilans.

Think about it. We have allowed our national government to exploit natural resources and wreak havoc on forests and the communities around them so that we in Metro Manila can enjoy the comforts that electric power brings and of continual relative prosperity. We have allowed real estate developers to convert rice lands into subdivisions that are only halfway inhabited. In much the same way, we have allowed the urban poor to be brought into the fray, used by national government developers and slum lords alike to justify the dispossession of farmers, turning them into urban poor overnight.

What can be done? The state of affairs only drives home one of the main points of the future of cities document—that the city is a shared space. At first glance, this statement may seem like a semiutopian, overly simplistic assertion from a naïve peacenik philosophy that cannot recognize class and political conflicts within cities. It is, however, as much a summary of the relationship of the city to its surrounding environment, as it is a definition of the peculiarity of concentrated settlements of people pursuing different economic and social activities in finite space. In other words, whether we like or not, we have to share the city with other people who live in it, and we have to limit the city’s boundaries so that it does not unduly encroach on the environment that surrounds it. We truly have no choice. It may not be terrorism that will ultimately destroy our Philippine cities. It may either be atrophy or environmental destruction that will finally catch up with us. What kind of future do we want?

THE FUTURE OF PHILIPPINE CITIES: THE PROJECT

The Future of Philippine Cities project was conceptualized to provide the members of PHILSSA with an urban development framework. The outcome, however, is a process-oriented and interactive tool, rather than a ready set of answers for NGOs working in urban areas. The initial draft was tested on some members of PHILSSA in a workshop held at the Bureau of Soils and Water Management. A truncated version was presented to an assembly of NGOs, POs, members of the academe and government functionaries, including the mayor, in Cebu City.

This approach recognizes that NGOs working in urban areas must understand the urban development process fully to ensure that its work in the urban sector is appropriate for their particular situations.

The Future of Philippine Cities, despite its "futuristic" title, is not a collection of predictions. It does, however, map out fundamental philosophies designed to enable NGOs to come up with a reasonably appropriate trajectory of the future.

The Future of Philippine Cities project and document is a tool for reflection, a workshop in progress. Those who are looking for cut-and-dried solutions may be disappointed in this document, as they will definitely still have to do some thinking after reading the document.

If the document starts people off on a process of rethinking their strategies and viewpoints of their work in the cities, then it would have achieved part of its goals. The challenge of work in Philippine cities, urban and urbanizing areas is for people to understand what is happening as a result of urbanization and its main source, which is globalization. As NGOs, our natural tendency is to only engage in one or two sectoral fields of expertise. This is understandable due to NGOs’ lack of resources. But it is NGOs’ lack of resources that make it imperative for them to look for allies in their specific areas of operation so that they can multiply the impact of their "investments." And one way of doing that is for NGOs to know their cities very well. They cannot have a deep understanding of the specific city’s workings, nor will they get the respect of officials, whether allies or adversaries, if they constantly have to fly from one little barangay in one city to another little barangay in another. Urban NGOs outside Metro Manila have achieved so much more impact and success because they have chosen to concentrate in one area.

Does this mean that we will always have to "reinvent the wheel" in every context?

The Philippines is blessed with a wonderful diversity of land forms, of experience and of people that have shaped its history and its built environment. These are the specifics that have to be looked at by NGOs. On the other hand, there is no need to reinvent the wheel every time, but there is a need to choose which wheel or gear to use in specific contexts, so to speak. To do that, we need to know local machinery and histories.

IMAGINING THE PHILIPPINE CITY OF THE FUTURE

When we think of the future of Philippine cities, what do we see? Do we see crowded, polluted places with uncollected garbage, water shortage, horrendous traffic, rising crime and perennial floods? Do we imagine a scenario that is just the worse version of Metro Manila today?

Or do we imagine a gentler, kinder environment, where people have learned to live and look out for one another because of their proximity, where traffic flows smoothly, and the transport system is efficient? Do we see less flooding because sewers have been improved, and there are parks and trees that absorb rainwater?

It is almost painful to ponder these questions. Many Filipinos, especially those in Metro Manila, are already living the first future. Most people would like to see the second one, but there are enough people who will say, "It is too good to be true."

People refuse to believe that a better future is possible because they feel that it is too hard to break habits and "nakagawian." Unfortunately, people would rather be comfortable in their discomfort rather than face the prospect of exerting effort to change their behavior.

THE FUTURE OF PHILIPPINE CITIES IN THE HANDS OF NGOS

When asked to work on the project "The Future of Cities," the first thing that came to my mind was that we all have to understand what cities are before we can see a vision of their future. After all, "Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan." George Santayana’s dictum that "Those who do not know history are bound to repeat it" also applies to urban development and city-building mistakes.

The ideal situation would have been to have a project that sent us back to the history of urbanization and city building in the context of the economic and social history of practically the whole world. We would have to go back to what happened in Europe and America, and the making of colonies around the world. The ideal would have us look at how the Spanish established settlements in the Philippine archipelago, and how we developed as a colony under the US, and as a new Republic in a world order that has changed from World War II to the twenty-first century. We would have had to look at the history of subdivision development in the Philippines and how this has contributed to the urbanization in the Philippines (while the same model contributed to the "suburbanization" of America). Yet doing that will take another year.

The practical thing to do at present is to start with a definition of cities in the Philippine context, as a way of summing up where we are at the moment in a very practical way. The other side of that equation is to talk about where NGOs —a good indication of civil society—are at the moment with regard to their views on urban development.

And this is where PHILSSA NGOs are at the moment, except for ICSI that does not have urban development framework, or at least has no articulated urban development framework. Some of them consider UDHA as a framework. Unfortunately, UDHA is NOT a framework. Rather, UDHA is a policy response to a perceived problem that NGOs think is central to urban development, i.e., housing provision for the poor. It is definitely based on a framework, and that framework is simple. That framework is social justice, and therefore, social development is possible only if there is redistribution of resources. The analysis implicit in UDHA is that if urban land is distributed to the poor, then development will ensue.

Unfortunately, the city is not just the sum of its parts. Its various parts are not only physical, such as land, facilities and transportation, but are also nonphysical. These include social services, economic interaction between "market forces" (i.e., people of the city who buy and sell goods and services) cultural interaction, and city management and arbitration, otherwise known as governance.

An understanding of the history of urbanization and city formation is the key to understanding the FUTURE OF CITIES in the Philippine context. The final document of this phase of the Future of Cities project, gives us the current definition of Philippine cities, where NGOs are now, and some guideposts in helping NGOs determine their possible futures by forcing them to rethink their city contexts and their current mind-sets.

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The First Bicol cities sharing workshop on Shelter and Urban Planning