Maskipaps

Home seems to have slipped farther away of late. Come to think of it, anything and everything seems to be of greater distance nowadays, no thanks to the worsening traffic situation in Metro Manila.

Even the road navigation apps have become discombobulated by the heavy gridlock which has now reached epic proportions. Lucky is the dapper tycoon who sits comfortably in his SUV with his chauffeur, or the gaming king who drives a Lamborghini with escorts. Even luckier is the taipan who goes around in his chopper. But ordinary mortals like you and me have to endure the worsening daily traffic nowadays.

It does not help that the nonstop rains, like a plague for stranded commuters, worsen the traffic situation many times over.

But it’s not only the rains that should be blamed for the mess that we’re in.

Hodgepodge

A big part of the problem really is the lack of serious urban planning in Metro Manila, and perhaps the whole country.

Look around and our cities are really just a hodgepodge of this and that – pockets of developments here and there, sprawling lands filled with informal settlers, main thoroughfares eaten by giant malls, skyscrapers boxing each other out and road networks that seem to have been mapped out on impulse.

Other countries have a long-term masterplan on which future developments are based. The result is a carefully thought out national physical framework that is beneficial to all and not just to a privileged few.

But do we have that now?  We don’t.

I asked around and some infrastructure players themselves lament that we really don’t have a well studied infrastructure masterplan.

Maskipaps vs masterplan

What do we have then?

It seems we just do it the best way we can, the maskipaps way – maski papaano. This refers to the Filipino ingenuity of doing things with whatever we have and however way we can. This is not necessarily bad. In fact, it’s creative and it can be good, but not for urban planning and development because there are long-term consequences.

Unfortunately, the maskipaps way is how we’ve been doing it when it comes to infrastructure planning. There is no long-term vision. It’s like anything goes. Developers can buy land and do whatever they want. Zoning and re-zoning happens to give way to buyers of casinos or whatever. Informal settlers, likewise, expand into whatever idle lands are available because of the lack of resettlement areas.

The result really is a metropolis that is bound to implode one day, not too far away.

Around the same month this time in 1983, then president Ferdinand Marcos issued Letter of Instructions No. 1350, which “provides for the institutional framework for national physical planning.”

The late dictator said it is “the policy of the State that the land resources of the nation shall be utilized to obtain the maximum possible social and economic benefits for the people, through the undertaking of a comprehensive inventory of land resources and their current use and the subsequent adoption of national physical planning and supportive regional and subregional land classification and utilization plans that shall serve to indicate, but not to mandate, the desired use of such land resources, taking into consideration the interrelated developmental and environmental needs of the local communities and the need to uphold and protect private property rights in accordance with law. “

This was 36 years ago. Whatever happened to that?

Shouldn’t we have a long-term infrastructure masterplan? Shouldn’t we have done that decades ago?

Congress should, therefore, legislate a 30-year infrastructure masterplan that will harmonize all infrastructure plans, sustain high government budget allocation, and determine the appropriate funding modality for each project. 

This and the newly created Construction Industry Roadmap 2020 to 2030 – created by the trade department and the Philippine Contractors Association can work hand in hand.

Indeed, together with other policy recommendations of the newly created construction roadmap, the government and the private sector can generate a total of P130 trillion over the next 10 years, which can then translate to more than seven million high-paying construction jobs, equipped with new set of modern tools, technology and mindset. There will be heavier traffic in the process, but hopefully we will eventually reach a time when everything is clearer and smoother because of long-term planning.

We really need to do that. We can’t be putting up one road after another only to result in problematic landscapes in the future.

Look at what happened at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. We can no longer expand its runways because we have allowed development in just about every piece of space surrounding it.

If we are to build  future cities, safe cities, and the flourishing communities that every Filipino family deserves, we need a blueprint that is well thought out and carefully studied. It can no longer be maskipaps.

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com