Noted architect warns of acute RP housing crisis

"We build monuments for the dead but we cannot even have a decent housing for the living,"

Architect Felino Palafox Jr. gave this observation during a speech about ‘Urban Futures’ before the Management Association of the Phils. (MAP) general meeting at the Manila Peninsula Hotel recently.

Palafox – principal architect, urban planner, founder and managing partner of Palafox and Associates – was invited to speak on "Global Trends and Revolutionary Ideas in Urban Development," thus, Postcards from the Future.

Aware of the prevalent housing crisis, he stated that with an annual backlog of 500,000 houses, there are 4.2 million homeless Filipinos at present. Palafox also disclosed a recent projection, stating that years from now, the Filipino population will reach 20 million – equaling the current population count of Canada and Australia.

Consequently and if not acted upon, the housing crisis will be more serious and by the year 2010, the traffic problem will be worse with a slow speed rate of three kilometers per hour! Jun Palafox’s practical advice?" "Take a walk," he suggested.

"Taking a walk" is his idea of de-stressing amidst duress thus he dreams of walkable communities – lighted pathways, boardwalks, promenades – where people would be encouraged to walk instead of choking the streets with their vehicles.

"Every street, ever corner should be made favorable for walking," the world-class Architect and Urban Environment Planner said. "Carparks are best behind – not in front of – buildings so people can walk their covered pavements. Highways should be decongested of vendors. There should be more well-lighted streets, bridges, and wider walkable sidewalks," he enumerated.

Since Philippines is an agricultural country, Palafox dreams of building an ‘agro-polis’ where people have "more leisure parks, more greens, less traffic jams, less garbage and maybe some vegetable garden even at the condominium rooftop," he enthused.

He also pictures a balanced park-like environment where families dine, exercise, attend services, study, work, travel from and play at a single commercial-residential district. Palafox cited a Smokey Mountain layout resettlement site – a pro bono project where his group recreated an almost abandoned structure into a livable building with a view.

An audio-visual collection entitled "Postcards from the Future" displayed the choicest places in Quezon City, Makati, Binondo, Pasig and EDSA where vendors, petty thieves, traffic jam and other horrors are daily ordeal.