A few weeks ago, President said Metro Manila would be dead in 25 years.
What he meant of course was that the Metropolitan area will no longer be a livable place. He stopped there and did not make any further statements as to what should be done to avert this impending environmental and social catastrophe.
This is perhaps because there are very few options he can see that could be undertaken to mitigate the urban decay now going on or simply because he is resigned to the inevitable.
This problem, however, is not only peculiar to the National Capital Region. We see it happening in many metropolitan areas in countries around the world.
In fact, the urban problems in many Asian and African metropolitan mega cities are far worse than ours.
Throughout the world today, there are already 512 cities with more than 1 million people but only 31 are so-called mega cities. Of the 50 most populated urban metropolitan areas, 18 are in China while five are in India.
Our own Metro Manila which comprises an area of 619.57 square kilometers is the 32nd largest city according to one study that I consulted, with about 13 million people. It has a population density of about 19,988 people per square kilometer, which is sixty times higher than the national average.
The city of Manila, on the other hand, has a population density of about 46,000 per square km which has been adjudged as the highest in the world.
We know of course, that if we add the municipalities and cities within commuting distance of the NCR, the population balloons to about 24 million people which would put NCR in the top 10 of the most populated urban centers in the world.
Yet, the population increase in the NCR continues to outpace the national average and although we see a certain degree of government response, these are all inadequate to avert the scenario painted by the President from happening in 25 years.
This is also true in many cities all over the country because of our burgeoning national population. Baguio, a city originally planned for 25,000 people has now a population of about 350,000 and growing. This basically destroyed the beautiful landscape of the city but nothing or very little is being done to deal with this huge problem.
In fact, some aspects of urban life being projected 25 years hence are already being experienced during certain days by everyone. Monumental traffic gridlock, environmental pollution, overcrowding, and diminishing open spaces because of population pressure are but a few.
If we go to other cities like Lagos in Nigeria, Calcutta in India or Metro Jakarta which is very near us, the situation in these places are worse than in the NCR.
Today, of the more than 7.5 billion people who inhabit the planet, 50 percent live in an urban environment and this will go up to 60 percent by 2030.
There have been some proposals in the past to transfer our seat of government somewhere and leave Metro Manila as the economic center. I have not been hearing this proposal lately. But if ever this proposal is taken up seriously, where could the seat of government be transferred? We are after all a very small country and there are no longer plenty of open spaces left large enough to develop.
We have seen this in some big countries like Turkey and Brazil. For Turkey, the seat of government was moved to Ankara and Brazil developed Brasilia to be its capital city.
In Metro Manila, we see reclamation projects being undertaken mostly be private companies in Manila Bay as new commercial centers but these activities are continuously being slowed down because of the opposition of concerned environmental organizations.
But if one looks at it, reclamation is probably the only viable option to find more land areas to satisfy the need for more spaces to expand. And whether some sectors like it or not, these reclamation projects will continue into the future not only simply because of the need but there is really no other area for expansion.
This is why the government should take the lead and come up with an overall development plan to avoid unplanned development that the government will regret in the future. In fact, it is already happening in some of the areas that have already been reclaimed. A mixed land use is emerging simply because zoning is not being implemented vigorously in the reclaimed areas.
As we all know, a well-planned development always considers proportional allocation of areas for residential, roads, open spaces and commercial spaces to be able to come out with a well balanced growth that considers the impact of any future activity.
We need wider roads, bigger open spaces to constitute so called “breathing spaces” and recreational areas. If in the future the government would really like to move the seat of government, the area around Corregidor could be reclaimed with the island remaining undeveloped to be the forested and recreational area of a new city.
Of course, the reclamation effort of this nature has to be a gigantic effort because to build a new city to constitute a new seat of government, we are talking of an area of at least between 50 to 80 square kilometres and will take years to complete but if our timeline is 25 years before the metro “dies,” there is time.
That is if the government chooses this way forward.
But if the preferred solution is more of the same, then death, in the words of the President, is inevitable.
