Developed

Every Filipino visiting Tokyo should nurse an envy at the sight of a metropolis so well governed.

I frequented this city many times in the past. Each time I visit, the city seems to be cleaner and more efficient.

Tokyo has about the same population as Metro Manila, although it is easy to imagine her population shuffles about more intensively than people do here. The reason is simple: they can.

As a victim of Manila’s horrendous traffic jams, it was a thrill last week to actually go to four separate places in Greater Tokyo between lunch and dinner. In Manila, one can no longer have four appointments in different places in one afternoon.

Even during rush hours, traffic moves in Tokyo. The reason for this, apart from a thoroughly developed subway system, Tokyo just kept on building elevated expressways crisscrossing the metropolitan area. In many places, there are as many as four decks of elevated roadway in this city.

Five days in this city, I have not seen a single traffic enforcer. There is simply no need for them in a place where everyone so scrupulously observes the rules.

Even in small alleys, there are pedestrian stoplights. Needless to say, they, too, are scrupulously observed.

No one smokes in the streets of Tokyo these days. One may smoke only in specifically designated cubicles equipped with air filters.

No one litters in the streets of this city – not because there are stiff fines as in Singapore but because that is the right thing to do. Notwithstanding, the streets are washed every night.

Tokyo sets a high standard for how a metropolis ought to be governed. Future infra needs are anticipated and set in place before congestion happens. The Japanese are proud of their trains, and for good reasons. Japan Railways reports a cumulative delay of only a few seconds for all its train services each year. A breakdown in the rail system, which happens regularly with the MRT, will be a national scandal soothed only by the resignation of the top rail officials.

Because this is such a well-governed metropolis, productivity is imaginably high. Urban efficiency and high productivity constitute a virtuous cycle. The key to that is the quality of governance provided.

Metropolitan Manila and Metropolitan Tokyo are on two ends of the spectrum of urban governance. A four-hour flight took me from one extreme to the other.

The descent back to the Third World was quick. Back at the Manila airport, I saw passengers wrapping their baggage in duct tape to protect from thieves and extortionists. Phone calls dropped. Internet service was slow. The streets were grimy. Governance remains substandard.

Close to midnight, traffic was still at a crawl. I looked at the forlorn faces of commuters unable to get a ride. I knew I was home.  

Townships

If Metro Manila had a reliable rail service, it would be easy for much of the city’s working population to live out of the city.

An efficient rail system explains why there are few high-density housing complexes within Metropolitan Tokyo itself. Because Metro Manila failed to build an efficient mass transit system, the trend here is towards high-rise, high-density mass housing. Meanwhile, the urban transport system remains primitive, producing the traffic nightmare we now endure daily.

Since we are not about to build a comprehensive mass transit system in the foreseeable future, the next best solution to the problem is to build townships that are as self-contained as possible. One such township is the Lancaster New City now being built over 1,107 hectares in Kawit and General Trias in Cavite province. The Property Company of Friends or Pro-Friends is engineering this sprawling project.

For years, our housing developers have been building low-cost housing projects in the provinces surrounding Metro Manila. The economists at Pro-Friends, however, realized that people who buy in these housing developments continue to commute to the city for work, spending a large bulk of their income on transportation.

The Lancaster New City, with its scale, is planned to attract BPO companies to its property development so that jobs will be available to people who invest in housing in the community. BPO companies, after all, are trying to disperse out of the city to bring down costs and attract more talent.

With jobs brought closer to the homes, residents will now be spending less on transport and more for raising their quality of life. This is, no doubt, an attractive proposition for those wishing to flee the infernal traffic jams in the metropolitan area.

Pro-Friends, with this project, sets a new standard for property development. The challenge now is to build economically self-sustaining communities, reducing the need to travel to work and reducing the carbon footprint for residents.

It is an attractive proposition for me to be sure, considering how much gas I consume daily and how much exasperation I endure getting to and from work. It will be an attractive proposition for the younger generation seeking lifestyles with a smaller carbon footprint.

This economically contained township concept will have to be planned on a certain scale. It is a project scale that requires robust financing.

Fortunately for Pro-Friends and their ambitious township project, a large banking conglomerate found the idea of a self-contained community an attractive and viable one. This banking group took out a stake in Pro-Friends, bringing the Lancaster New City development several steps closer to completion.

With our banking system now able to finance large developments in a lower interest rate environment, it should be possible to replicate this township concept elsewhere.