Last week we looked at sidewalks and the importance of pedestrian comfort in the creation of great city districts. Wide, well-paved, and well-lit sidewalks alone, however, do not provide the whole framework for creating an urban paradise. The elegant gray granite-paved sidewalks have to be countered with generous green from street trees and shrubbery, as well as the varied color provided by an even larger context of sustainable urban design.
Urban design — the composition of buildings and spaces in a city — and greening (via the little known or appreciated profession of landscape architecture) have, in fact, been the keystones of a new movement. The success of modern districts, cities, and larger metropolitan areas depend on changing the old paradigm based on just urban economics or functional circulation of goods, services, and people. An even more overarching approach is emerging that requires a new type of urbanism, one that addresses the standard economic and functional requirements but puts emphasis on greening and being green.
This new movement is called landscape urbanism. This movement acknowledges that cities are becoming the pervasive setting for human activity and life. The Philippines itself is 60-percent urban and growing in its urbanization. Landscape urbanism also changes the way we build (or re-build) cities, eschewing default heavy-handed engineering and mono-functional development templates for a diversity of uses, in settings that bring back nature (and work with nature and climate) to enrich life in the urban sphere.
The movement evolved from a melding of the disciplines of urban design, city planning (mainly the new urbanism movement), and landscape architecture. The new urbanism movement started in the ’80s as a corrective to urban sprawl and the monotony of business towers in sterile central business districts serviced by ticky-tacky residential dormitory suburbs. The movement espoused more mixed uses in city districts, merging places to live, work, and play right in the city; replacing this for inefficient suburbanization that has eaten up the green fields and countryside (that, by the way, mitigates the effects of flooding and air pollution).
At the same time, landscape architects were pushing for more environmentally sensitive ways of building, or the site and nature-sensitive planning of buildings and complexes in and around the city. From the ’80s onwards, they looked at more balanced ways to mix landscape design with urban design to reduce heat gain, air pollution, noise pollution, and to mitigate flooding. All this was decades ahead from today’s “green” initiatives.
The two trajectories have merged today, in the light of energy conservation, climate change, and increasing urban populations. It is now cool to be green. Even the famous architect/planner Andres Duany, icon of new urbanism, admits that green urban design and landscape architecture are now cool and sexy.
Asian cities have led the way in this new direction for cities. Singapore and Kuala Lumpur have “greened” up since the ’70s and ’80s. Their cities initiated the wholesale planting of street trees at a time when most of Metro Manila cut down on planting street trees.
Today, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur are the greenest in terms of urban infrastructure, while Metro Manila’s streets (except for districts like Makati and enclaves like the University of the Philippines in Diliman) are generally devoid of shade trees and greenery. Those lollipop baletes planted along EDSA are a joke, providing no shade or aesthetic value, and are destined not to grow any more than the sorry little holes they are planted in will let them (which, in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur are five times larger).
The greening of those two cities has since taken on a new level: that of greening more parks and open civic spaces, and the greening of the buildings themselves — not just in terms of energy efficiency, but literally getting the green up the walls and on the roofs. The two cities are among the best in the world in the provision of parks and open space in proportion to built-up areas of their respective cities. In most of Manila, the proportion is dwindling every day.
The only district (that started roughly the same time or even before Singapore or Kuala Lumpur) with well-maintained green open spaces has been the Makati CBD, which started developing in the early ’60s. It has since filled up with buildings but retains several green open spaces, gardens and its street trees. In fact, looking from the windows of its skyscrapers, you see the district’s streets immersed in green canopies of trees.
Of the designers of the green you see today in Singapore and Kaula Lumpur, many are Filipino landscape architects and urban designers. Today, these professionals are being retained by private companies and the local government of Makati to do what they and other landscape architects and urban designers did for the two Asian tigers — green up the city and value-up its urban design.
In modern Makati today, you will see signs declaring ongoing “streetscape” improvements, LEED-compliant buildings, complexes with gardens, and the enhancement of parks. The district’s commercial areas alone are now far greener than even those in Singapore.
Looking up from the highest penthouses, you will notice an increasing number of green roofs in Makati, along with podiums that boast al fresco decks, pools, and gardens for all to enjoy. The district looks like it is more and more guided by what is green of good urban design, rather than just the green of profit.
This new direction that Makati has developed from an already good start is an example of where landscape urbanism can take us. If the rest of Metro Manila takes Makati’s lead, the whole metropolis can well be on its way to besting even Singapore.
The green materials Singapore used for their greening include narras and mussaendas, yellow flame trees and mahoganies — all found or (in the instance of the mussaendas) were sourced originally from the Philippines. We have the architects, landscape architects, and urban designers to give shape to our modern urban settings. We have what it takes to grow our own type of urbanism, our own future framed in a lush landscape, decidedly modern yet distinctively Filipino.
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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.