A flood of feedback

OK, OK, so my article on the esteros of Manila found the city baked in an extended summer, with little evidence of that element that tests our patience and waterproofing every year – rain. This is exactly the very point I wanted to make, that we should make hay while the suns shines… or rather, dredge and clear our canals while the weather permits. Maybe the new MMDA head honcho will give this some thought.

In the meantime, I received a flood of feedback from readers and other parties who were hyperlinked to my laptop (I travel a lot). Many Dilimanians wrote in to share memories and lament the passing of the UP of old. The others wrote about their memories of the esteros and the memorable structures that lined the university’s once clean banks.

Let’s start with this e-mail from a biologist, Benjamin Vallejo Jr., who wrote:

Dear Mr. Alcazaren,

It was interesting to learn that the central part of the UP Academic Oval was intended to be an artificial lake. If it had pushed through, we would have seen something like the tidal basin of Washington DC, with Quezon Hall and the Main Library reminiscent of the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. Instead of cherry blossoms fringing the banks, we would have flame trees.

Well, what we have now is the famous UP lagoon that is better called a sewage treatment pond. Generations of biology majors have at one time sampled water from this classic example of eutrophication. In the process, most, if not all, of them would fall into the wash! I suppose no one would get a biology degree from UP without falling into this cesspool.

It is good that UP has made Sundays car-less days at the oval. There is that time of the year (at the start of the rainy season) that the road bisecting the oval into two, the one that links Engineering with the CAL Faculty Centre, is carpeted with flame tree blossoms. One can walk on the carpet of blossoms. This is probably the most magical sight on campus. The next Monday, all the blossoms are crushed by rubber tires.

The Academic Oval area has become less like a jungle (the grass, it seems, is regularly mowed). This has made the lagoon a good picnic area. Unfortunately, the lagoon remains, as it once was – a foul gray cesspool. UP should have its Environmental Science and Biology institutes do something about this.

I am a full-blooded maroon. I remember when I was a kid studying at UP Elementary, there were fairy shrimps still in the streams leading into the lagoon. Now, there are none. There were soft-shelled turtles and wild gurami fish and carps then. Now, there are just the kataba, more popularly called isdang canal. Kataba can live in the stinkiest of water. Fairy shrimps require relatively clear water. There were still shrimps when I was at UP High (when I first fell into the lagoon in my second year Biology class).

The UP is still relatively green. As a biologist, I know that this greenery is deceiving. This greenery remains in just a few areas. The Academic Oval is the biggest of these. If one walks away from the well-trodden paths, you would see some endangered birds (that have been scientifically documented by Prof. Perry Ong of Biology) such as kingfishers, woodpeckers and flowerpeckers. Where else would one find kingfishers and woodpeckers in almost treeless Metro Manila? UP’s administration should take pride that the university remains a sanctuary for nature. UP must allocate areas on campus for preserving greenery while it balances its goals of infrastructure development.

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Thank you, Mr. Vallejo. Yes, the planner William Parsons meant for the central part of the Academic Oval to hold a lake or "basin" much like Washington DC’s. Parsons was, in fact, one of a select few consultants to work on the development of Washington DC in the early 1930s. The US capital was based on a revised master plan created by a team headed by Daniel Burnham (who also prepared a master plan for Manila in 1905).

The "basin" would have been wonderful. Students and residents nearby would have been able to engage in water-based sports, picnic along its banks and use the area, as they do now, as a rendezvous for certain aspects of their social development. That said, and despite the comments of Mr. Vallejo, the lagoon has undergone much improvement. Former Dean Honni Fernandez did a wonderful job of resurrecting the place from total oblivion.

Much can still be done and it is not impossible that Parson’s original intent is finally implemented. There are six more years till the university’s centennial and this could be one of the proposals for the state university’s larger "resurrection." With a "basin," the buildings of the university could be integrated with an element that serves as a reflecting pool, a means of transport and a venue of social interaction.

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Another e-mail came from Dr. Ricardo Braganza who wrote that he "…enjoyed reading (the) feature article about UP Diliman. Being a UP alumnus myself, I can’t help reminiscing those bygone eras. I totally agree that those places you mentioned really stand out in my mind."

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Another reader wondered what I meant when I said that the campus was threatened by "academic sprawl."

I meant by this term to point out the fact that most of the university’s expansion had taken the route of parcelization without integration. The original intent of housing colleges in interconnected pavilions easily accessed by walking was abandoned in favor of individual plots assigned to various "complexes." Each of these built its own parking lot and driveway, indicating the priority given by later-day campus planners and architects to car-riding students and professors.

The effect of present campus planning at the UP is that the campus is "sprawling" away almost without rhyme (look at the cacophony of architectural styles) or reason (a gym in the middle of nowhere), making the task of catching classes more and more difficult from the point of view of physical distance and lack of protection from the sun and rain (not to mention muggers, rapists and drive-by shooters). There is still hope but the university needs to acknowledge these problems as well as address the constant and growing pressure from the engulfing city.

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From the muddy waters of the UP lagoon, we go back to the fetid esteros of Manila. I received this e-mail from Brother J. Benedict of La Salle University:

Dear Paulo,

I enjoyed your article "Storied Esteros" in the Saturday STAR (June 15).  The estero has been a part of my life since the day I arrived at DLSU, Sept. 28, 1958. Mrs. Maria Clara Lobregat used to live on the other side of what was a parking lot for years.  Along our "western front" is the Leveriza estero.  The older brothers told me the story about her father (Lorenzo).  When he was commissioner of public works (or something the equivalent), he covered a lot of esteros.  He didn’t cover ours because he was a good public servant and didn’t want people to feel that he was giving himself (and us) preferential treatment by covering the estero along his property. They don’t make many of these public servants anymore. Sometimes, when I use a back door road and go by the estero, I want to cry!  Hope you can stimulate someone to clean them up!

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The good brother experiences what a million or so Manilans have to live with, making their homes along the waterways of Metro Manila. As with the UP, there is hope if we all take the trouble of acknowledging the extent of the problem and addressing this with a long-term sustainable solution.

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Thank you to all who wrote in. The dream of universities and cities blessed with clean and picturesque water bodies is not an elusive one. Many of our neighbors in Asia have achieved this elegance in their civic planning. It’s up to us to accept our decrepit surroundings or to take our physical destinies into our own hands… to shape our institutions and cities into venues for an enhanced and long-deserved quality of urban life.

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Feedback is welcome. E-mail the writer at citysensephilstar@hotmail.com.