Metro Manila has a weak identity and its citizens feel little attachment to it. But the soullessness of the city is not fated. The future of the city of our dreams is in our hands and that of enlightened local governments and urban planners.

by Paulo Alcazaren

	Metro Manila circa 2005 is a sprawling, congested and anarchic emgacity without a soul. [photos courtesy of Paulo Alcazaren]

AT TIMES, when the breeze is just so, the sun is shining, and peals of children's laughter ring out, Luneta's grand past can still be glimpsed, leaving no one to doubt that for 19th-century Manila, it was the prime leisure amenity. The American planner Daniel Burnham laid out a grand civic district in Manila, like Washington D.C.'s. Burnham's grand plan was never fully implemented. Only a few of the planned civic structures were built. After the war, plans were revised to move the capital to Quezon City. Luneta became a cogon-filled no-man's land eventually turning into the city's Central Park.

In the last two decades, Luneta has lost its original luster. Malls and fast-food joints have replaced it as city folk's weekend destination of choice, despite efforts to include both features on the grounds. The park is now populated with strange statues, like the 40-foot Lapu Lapu where the 1960's globe fountain used to be — kitsch replaced by folly. Extensions to the seaside section — their threats to mar the views of the bay thwarted by the project's suspension for lack of funds — are an eyesore. Most of the park's daily users are Manilans but their own local government does not manage this prime city amenity since it is under the National Parks Development Committee. It does function as a national civic space for Independence Day and presidential inaugurations but, without key national government buildings, the place is without a soul.

This is also true of Metro Manila, whose soullessness is one of the main reasons the metropolis has a weak identity and why its citizens feel little attachment to it. Metro Manila is a national capital without a clearly defined physical center. Unlike Washington D.C., Canberra, or New Delhi, Metro Manila's major civic structures are scattered around the metropolis. The Congress is in Novaliches, the Senate in Pasay, the Supreme Court on Padre Faura, and Malacañan is by the Pasig. The present administration's plans to decentralize its functions, like the move of the Department of Tourism (DOT) to Cebu, further fragments the national government's already inefficient physical infrastructure.

But before there was Metro Manila, there was, of course, Manila, whose urban history predates Burnham and goes back over 400 years to when the Spaniards used urbanization as a tool for control. Intramuros de Manila was the prime example, creating a template for all Philippine towns and cities. Pursued even by the Americans, this hegemony is continued today by the local elite. Thus, Manila's ups and downs reflect the instability of empires that placed it only at the fringe of their attentions, and, later, the vagaries of postcolonial, Third-World development. Manila, in other words, has always been a work in progress, with master plans continually being abandoned as regimes changed. This is why the city has always looked haphazard and why its future has always been in question.

Sure, there's been growth-in area, population, and urban problems. The arrabales around it evolved to new towns and eventually a "greater" Manila that would become today's maddening Metropolitan Manila. Future change seems destined to go from bad to worse. By 2015, can a city already so fractured in its governance, infrastructure and identity, possibly sink lower in the mess its citizens are now mired in? Can traffic, crime, floods, lack of jobs, a dearth of open space, and the loss of heritage get any direr? Can air, water, noise and visual pollution overwhelm Manilans any more than these four elements of urban blight already do?

Sadly, yes and yes. It's the reality of runaway urban population fueling sprawl and speculation-driven, environment-unfriendly, culturally vacuous "real-estate development." For the 11 million currently living in Metro Manila, the more compelling question may be, how far worse can it get?

There are several answers to that. Fortunately, among the possible replies is that it need not get any worse because there are a few things that can still be done to avoid what seems inevitable for a dystopic city.

	Postwar Manila still had traces of the genteel city Daniel Burnham had envisioned in the early 1900s.

BUT LET'S start from the beginning: Intramuros, the site of the original settlement of Maynilad, has a past long forgotten but for what remains of its walls and churches destroyed in the war. Restoration attempts began in the 1960s, but contemporary interventions have succeeded only in Disneyfying sections as marketing gimmicks to attract tourists. Initially, the Intramuros Administration did a good job. But today, its goals are lost in get-rich-quick schemes that compromise the district's heritage structures and management. There are now more informal settlers residing within than when 1960s Mayor Antonio 'Yeba' Villegas rudely tossed them out. Today Intramuros has lost most of its appeal and relevance to the lives of most Manilans, "wowing" few but the kitsch-inclined.

Unless complementary programs fit within larger plans for Manila's revival, the Walled City will find itself more and more colonized by squatters, fast-food stalls, and a booming student population. Being independent of the Manila City government, the district also suffers from an administrative detachment leading spotty public services. Residents within the walls, formal or otherwise, lack a clear connection to the larger community. The rebuilt walls, in effect, isolate Intramuros from the rest of the city, just as they did in the first three centuries of its existence.

Reconnection is the key to its revival. This should start at the administrative level. Intramuros was Manila and to separate it physically, administratively, and socially creates a cultural vacuum that explains some of the city's emotional emptiness. The changes should follow quickly at the physical level of urban design. Reunited Germany's Berlin has undergone a modern renaissance, due to an enlightened program of redevelopment taking into account the original fabric of its historic core without limiting creative architectural solutions. The world's greatest architects contributed to Berlin's innovative "infill" projects. These replaced lost housing, office stock, as well as allowed new structures, helping central Berlin connect itself with its greater metropolitan area.

The same can be done with Intramuros. Reconnect it by mass transit or sensible traffic rerouting. Relax the stringent "historical" constraints to architecture (tropical modernist buildings can be respectful of older structures as well as to the conserved street layout as in cities like Singapore and Hong Kong). Make sure a mix of uses balances the mainly warehouse and educational functions that Intramuros now accommodates. Finally, re-populating its interior with formal residents in affordable housing, resulting in an interesting resident mix, will counter the temptation to "gentrify" the district. It is this mix that will ensure the place is alive after hours and supports the activity that will also bring in the tourists.

Paulo Alcazaren teaches architecture and landscape architecture at the University of the Philippines, writes a popular column for the Philippine Star, edits a design magazine, and is currently working on three books on architecture and urbanism.

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