the happy city

A must read article from enRoute (via urbanism.org):

All through the city, pavement has been wrested away from private cars and converted into sandboxes, plazas, dance floors and bike paths. Paris has joined a global movement that seeks to change not just streets but the very soul of urban spaces. Its adherents believe that cities can become engines not just of economic growth. But of happiness.

The charge is being led by some of the world’s toughest towns, places like Bogotá, where happiness theory led one mayor to transform roads into parks and pedestrian “freeways,” and Mexico City, whose mayor is investing in urban beaches and bikeways in order to change the citizens’ gloomy outlook. Now the movement is spilling over to wealthier cities too. Seoul has ripped out a downtown freeway to make room for parks and streams. London has put the squeeze on cars with its now famous congestion charge.

These measures are often sold as emergency actions to tackle global warming. In fact, changing the way we design and use public space can change the way we move, the way we treat other people and ultimately the way we feel. Now you might think that Paris had long ago figured out the art of urban joy. But in recent years, residents have become so sick of noise, pollution and congestion that they have thrown their support behind a radical plan by Mayor Bertrand Delanoë to reclaim their streets. By 2012, suburban cars will be banned entirely from the city’s core.

Let's repeat those key thoughts:

"changing the way we design and use public space can change the way we move, the way we treat other people and ultimately the way we feel."

And

"a global movement that seeks to change not just streets but the very soul of urban spaces. Its adherents believe that cities can become engines not just of economic growth. But of happiness"

Do you dare hope that Metro Manila can someday make us happy?

Image credit: "Childlike Happiness"
by Mon Solo

getting better public transit in metro manila (part 1)

Mobilizing the political will
to improve public transit in Metro Manila
Part 1: A sense of urgency

This begins my long promised post on how to get better public transportation (in particular: bus rapid transit or BRT) in Metro Manila.

The first thing we have to do

The first thing we have to do is to create a sense of urgency.

To do that, we have to change the frame of the conversation.

Ask anyone in Metro Manila about the "effects of bad public transportation" and invariably they will say bad traffic. Granted that PUV driving behavior (caused by the economic model) does cause traffic chaos, to put that first on the list of adverse effects of bad public transportation is to be myopic.

Traffic congestion is the most visible effect -but it is largely visible to car users. What is invisible and ignored is the effect bad public transportation has on the urban poor and lower middle classes who are dependent on PUVs to get from home to school or to work.

That segment is the fat part of the pyramid, almost 80% of daily person trips in Metro Manila are taken via public transport. Despite the overwhelming size of this cohort, I have yet to see statistics that detail the consequences of the inefficient system on the riding public.

Whatever conversations about public transit that is covered by the papers centers around fare prices and the issues of the operators and drivers. Their regular threats to hold transport strikes and their near constant refrains of the fares being too low to support their livelihood and their complaints about harassment from the MMDA and the local police. (I am not discounting those complaints, only saying that they have become monotonous.)

The questions we need to ask are: what are the economic and social effects of an inefficient public transport on the riding public in general, and the urban poor in particular? What are the comparative efficiency advantages (e.g. -time) of driving a private car vs. taking the bus or jeep? Specifically we need to ask:

1. How much of the household budget does transportation consume? (Particularly for the C,D and E classes.) -and this should cover the costs of car ownership (purchase, maintenance and operation) as well as the costs of fares for all modes of public transit.
2. How much more time does it take to get from home to work or home to school when you take public transit (all modes) vs. a private car?
3. What is the social cost of the inefficiency and bias towards cars? How much less time do parents in families without cars have to spend with their children? Do students have to rent at boarding houses because it is just not feasible to travel from home to school daily?

My own back of the envelope (read: totally unscientific) calculations make me think transportation eats up about 20% of the household budget of middle class families -and that share could rise up to about a third in poorer families.

I suspect that the inefficient PUV system offsets the daily schedule of transit riders by 1.5 to 2 hours a day vs. private car owners. That's about 20 hours a week of bias for car owners.

But again, these are all just estimates. We need to demand that someone study the real numbers -or bring the stats out if there have already been studies.

We need to bring these issues to the public sphere and we need to frame this as an urgent social justice issue.

Imagine the direct impact you could have on the quality of life of the middle class and the urban poor if you could at least halve that time bias. You would be giving parents 10 more hours a week with their families; giving mothers and fathers an extra hour a day to tend to their children; giving students respite from the grueling time spent on the road or giving them the option of not having to pay for room and board just to live closer to school.

We need to make efficient public transport more important than traffic congestion.



Next up: Part 2: A promise of what is possible

Image credit: "63, alone / solo" by yeraze

brt up close

The public transportation system
we could have in Metro Manila

Here's an even more in depth look at bus rapid transit -how it works and how it is managed, featuring Bogota's Transmilenio.

The video is from The Oil Drum and was produced by Streetfilms, the same folks who gave you the documentary on Bogota's Ciclovia.

Just so you know that BRT systems are not only about improving traffic, but is basically about social justice through efficient transportation, read more about the Transmilenio's impact on the urban poor from the BoP folks in NextBillion. They write:

For Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of Bogotá who drove the initial planning and implementation of Transmilenio, making high quality transportation accessible to Bogotá's low-income population was central to the project. By attacking the public transportation crisis, characterized by "penny wars," gaps in service, unequal pricing, high levels of pollution, and serious traffic congestion, the new BRT system aimed to reduce inequality. This included not only disparities in the quality of transportation services, but also long-term economic and educational inequities perpetuated by a lack of mobility and access between high and low-income areas of the city. [WRI has an interesting feature piece available that also describes the breadth and vision of Peñalosa's urban reform efforts].

Hmmm. So "public transportation crisis" that is characterized by "penny wars, gaps in service, unequal pricing, high levels of pollution, and serious traffic congestion."

Does that sound familiar?


---
And this serves as a great prelude to my next post: "Getting better public transportation in Metro Manila."

yes, we can

But of course I have to post this:

greens heart cities

Or why environmentalists should learn
to love Metro Manila

Do you consider yourself an environmentalist? Do you like the great outdoors and natural landscapes? Do you want to preserve them? -- Then you should be concerned about our cities and should be committed to making them better places to live:

The NYT's Dot Earth blog neatly sums up the reasons why:

Urban life can be productive and satisfying and is almost always much more efficient in terms of energy and land use. Families are smaller. Incomes can rise quicker. Wealth builds from the concentration of capital and enterprise. Pollution is concentrated, too, but that makes it easier to clean up once incomes grow enough to pay for municipal services. (That hasn’t happened yet in many developing-country cities.) -emphasis added- UDC

The post that comes from is about managing traffic in an urban age but that one paragraph should be read and re-read by every pinoy environmentalist.

Environmentalism is so often associated with pastoral or naturalistic scenes; with climbing Mt. Apo, Pinatubo or Makiling; with swimming with the whale sharks in Donsol or with diving and exploring the Tubataha reefs. But, sustainability must begin with cities. If we can manage our land consumption and clean up our cities, we will do so much more towards protecting our environment.

Next time you and your friends plan on an environmental education trek, don't bother to drive out all the way to the countryside. Plan a walking tour of your local metropolis, instead. And then ask yourselves, "What can we do to make life in the city more livable? What can we do to make Philippine urban development more sustainable?"

Image credit: Makati Skyline
by Manila Daily Photo

balikbayan box

Ok, this is only tangentially connected to urban issues (maybe to global migration patterns?) but it was a bit of a distinctly pinoy thrill to see the Balikbayan Box Cover featured on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools:

A Filipino friend came to the rescue with this simple, but incredibly effective solution (in the Philippines, when someone travels abroad, it's customary to ship his/her relatives a Balikbayan box filled with gifts/goodies). At 60 inches linear total, the box cover conforms to major airline luggage size restrictions, although it may take some creativity to keep the weight within the 50-lb. limit in this large of a box.

Of course this is old hat for the OFW set, but it is more proof of how globalized we pinoys are. I didn't even know that Balikbayan Box has a wikipedia entry.

How cool is that? Kevin Kelly is only the co-founder of Wired Magazine and one of the pillars of the Long Now Foundation.

yes!

BRT in Beijing

Metro Manila may get Bus Rapid Transit

Hat tip to the kids at skyscraper city and to anonymous for the comment.
(Can't find the original source article just yet.) :

Vol. XXI, No. 27
Monday, September 3, 2007 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES
The Nation

Bus rapid transport system to put order
on Metro Manila thorough fares (sic)

METRO MANILA may soon put order to its bus system with the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) considering a bus rapid transit (BRT) system to address congestion.

A team of transportation experts early this month completed a pre-feasibility study for a BRT system for the metropolis.

The technical working group, chaired by Transportation Undersecretary Anneli R. Lontoc, include representatives from the United States Agency for International Development, University of the Philippines’ National Center for Transportation Studies (NCTS) and nongovernmental group Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities Center.

The BRT system will be similar to the TransMilenio in Bogota, Colombia and TransJakarta in Jakarta, Indonesia, the groups said in a statement.

The BRT is a mass transportation system using buses that operate on exclusive lanes with features commonly found in rail systems: pre-boarding fare collection at stations, scheduled trips, and the use of intelligent transport systems such as global positioning system.

The project proponents will attempt to combine the advantages of a metro system (exclusive right-of-way improves punctuality and frequency) with the advantages of a bus system (low construction and maintenance costs).

And while the system approaches the service quality of rail transit, it still provides the cost savings of bus transit.

Last March at the signing of a Metro Manila Declaration for Environmentally Sustainable Transportation, Jose Regin F. Regidor, director of NCTS, had said BRT is "environmentally sustainable transport."

It needs to be mainstreamed and not remain as a mere alternative to the current situation, he added.

The group said it soon will undertake a full feasibility study of a public BRT system, which would consider how commercial buses fit into the system.

The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority is currently implementing an organized bus route system for the metropolis’ 2,000 privately owned buses. BRT systems are widely used in the Latin Americas, the United States, Europe, Australia, and in Asian countries such as China, Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia. — Maria Kristina C. Conti

Postscript: Wait a minute! I got a little too excited there and didn't notice the date on the article. It was four months ago.

Any one have any updated news?

baltic ave = metro manila

Get Metro Manila on the Monopoly Board

Don't forget to support Maruja's campaign to get Metro Manila on the Monopoly World Edition Board. Maruja writes:

The company has pre-selected 68 cities, excluding Manila. However, savvy Pinoy Internet users are allowed to nominate Manila as a “Wildcard City”.

How? Just register at the voting site and nominate “Manila, Philippines”. You need to make sure that you are not nominating other similarly-named cities like “Manila, Alabama”. Don’t forget to nominate Manila every day for better chances!

The top 20 nominated Wildcard Cities will then be voted upon from March 1 to March 9, 2008. Only the top 2 nominated cities will make it in the board, along with top 20 pre-selected cities.

I think we deserve to at least be in the Baltic Avenue position. Don't knock it, it happens to be a strategic piece for a surefire strategy to win at Monopoly.

What are you waiting for? Go vote.

Image credit: monopoly by chinesecommie

squatter-free in 10 years?

Can BF really clear Metro Manila of squatters?

They have a plan, or so goes the claim of the Metro Manila Interagency Com­mittee for Informal Settlers.* The committee, led by Bayani Fernando says their proposal, if implemented, will mean no squatters in Metro Manila by 2018.

Tall order. Very tall order.

If the MMDA can accomplish that, then they would have accomplished what every other megacity in the developing world has failed at. They will do better than Mexico City, than Sao Paulo, than Mumbai, than Lagos, than Istanbul. They will succeed where even the Cities Alliance has struggled since 1999. They will accomplish, what even Marcos with his full dictatorial powers could not do.

And that is to reverse very strong global social, economic and network forces.

Can they do it? I seriously doubt it. Only because if you pull back the lens and zoom out to the global scale, the odds are seriously against it.

There are currently 1 BILLION slum dwellers in the world. Which means every sixth person in the world lives in an informal settlement. That number is expected to swell to 2 billion by 2030. Then 3 billion by the middle of the century. That's 1 in 3.

In Metro Manila, the lowball estimate is that 40% of the population lives in informal settlements, so every fifth person you meet in the metro lives in a slum community. That's at least 4.5 million people -more than double the population of Quezon City.

BF, for political reasons, was being coy about the plan and refused to give details:

However, Fernando assured that the program will not be dis­advantageous to the informal settlers because it includes the identification and development of relocation areas complete with schools, markets and more im­portantly, livelihood opportunities.

Which sounds to me like they are planning a newtown/satellite city strategy which London and Paris and a host of other cities tried in the late 1800s (and which is apparently in vogue again).

The results were a mixed bag. The satellite towns didn't decongest the center cities. All it did was spread the development out even further.

I'm skeptical but I'm willing to withold judgement until they show more details of the plan.

Do you think it could work?

Image credit: from My Sari-sari Store
by Sidney

*Btw, I wonder if any informal settlers actually sat in that committee?
They should have these people on board. They've won awards.

isko

Got this one courtesy of Benito Vergara.

UP Survey

Maligayang ika-100 taon, mga Iskolar ng Bayan!

1. Student number?
84-15516. Malas pag ang EPN first 3 reverse or last 3.

2. College?
Masscomm. Pumasok ako Institute pa lang. Nung nakatapos ako, College na sya. (Mas gusto sana namin yung "School of Mass Communication" -pero gaya gaya daw sa econ.)

3. Ano ang course mo?
Journalism. (wag mo nang itanong)

4. Nag-shift ka ba o na-kickout?
overstaying. muntik na ma kick-out.

5. Saan ka kumuha ng UPCAT?
Law School. Katabi ko puro bebots. Cute lahat, mukhang galing exclusive schools. naka shorts yung dalawa, naka miniskirt yung isa. Hindi ko alam kung paano ko natapos yung test.

6. Favorite GE subject?
Econ 44

7. Favorite PE?
Filipino games. Syato!

8. Saan ka nag-aabang ng hot guy sa UP?
hot guy? galing ba sa babaylan tong survey na to?

hot girls. sa Sampa. Sa BA. sa AS Lobby...

9. Favorite prof(s)
RRRingles. (kahit binagsak nya ko --kasalanan ng ed in chief sa class paper. ako yung nag produce ng paper, sya ang may grade). Tessa Jazmines. Rico Jose. Mike Tan. Winnie Monsod. Diane Teotico (r.i.p.) -dami eh. (ang tagal ko kasi sa UP)

sa UPIS - si Mrs. Esguerra and si Dr. Villalobos and si Dr. Matutina

10. Pinaka-ayaw na GE subject.
Econ 11, 22, 33

11. Kumuha ka ba ng Wed or Sat classes?
hinde. pero tambay campus pa rin ako.

12. Nakapag-field trip ka ba?
dami. pero walang aksyon.

13. Naging CS ka na ba or US sa UP?
haha. hahahaha. hahahahahaha.

14. Ano ang Org/Frat/Soro mo?
orgs: UPCYM. Journ Club. Geek Squad. Quom-SAGM. TUGON. UP Christmass. MassComm Volunteer Corps ("qua modo nunc, spadix bos!"),
Frata: Toma Suka Tumba, Kappa Pi Pi Sinipon. Luz Vi Minda.

15. Saan ka tumatambay palagi?
Sa AS - sa hill. Sa Masscomm, sa Masscomm, sa SC room o di kaya sa common, o sa canteen, o sa steps. O kaya sa GG Hall.

16. Dorm, Boarding house, o Bahay?
tambayan.

17. Kung walang UPCAT test at malaya kang nakapili ng kurso mo sa UP, ano yun? (Given ang mentality mo nung HS ka)
Human Kinetics - dance major. daming seksi! (sabi mo "mentality" ko nung HS ako eh...)

18. Sino ang pinaka-una mong nakilala sa UP?
UPIS ako. si Raffy Hidalgo yata ang una kong nakilala.

19. First play na napanood mo sa UP?
mas magandang tanong: First play na kasama ako. PRISM (UPCYM) -galing nung play (kudos kay Silvia Garde at kay Bong Dadap) ayos pa ang rehearsals sa panliligaw.

20. Name the 5 most conyo orgs in UP
isa na lang: Eye-Suckers. Pero crush ko yung naging presidente nila.
(Hindi si Anthony Pangilinan! Si Ilsa Reyes!)

21. Name 5 of the coolest orgs/frats/soro in UP.
Eh di yung 5 na miembro ako.

22. May frat/soro bang nag-recruit sa yo?
Toma Suka Tumba. Frating Gutom.

23. Saan ka madalas mag-lunch?
sa coop. All you can rice!

24. Masaya ba sa UP?
Tinanong mo pa! (teka, taga UP ka ba?)

25. Nakasama ka na ba sa rally?
Syempre. Nanguna pa. (We were trying to kick our dean out. hehehe.)

26. Ilang beses ka bumoto sa Student Council
sikret. (malalaman mo kung gaano katagal ako overstaying, eh.)

27. Name at least 5 leftist groups in UP
LFS. Samasa. NUSP. TWSC. (teka, hindi ako makaisip ng panglima)

28. Pinangarap mo rin bang mag-laude nung freshman ka?
iba yung mga pangarap ko eh. wow...pare...colors...galing...kita mo?

29. Kanino ka pinaka-patay sa UP?
Syet. dami eh.

Si Jenny, si Ilsa, si Deeda, si Ruthie, si Bel, si Gina, si Chesca(naks!), si Emy (naks ulit!), si Maricar, si Anna, si Tina, si Prunes, si...

30. Kung di ka UP, anong school ka?
anong klaseng tanong naman yan? sabi ko na nga ba hindi ka taga UP, eh.

sige. Juned. Chesca. Missy. Moni. BenX. taya! (sumama ka na rin, Chiquit!)


Pahabol na tanong:

31. Paboritong inuman?
Nanette's sa Maginhawa.