subject to revision
Title: Property, Patrimony & Teritory
Author: Ernesto M. Serote
Date Published: 2004.
LAND AND THE FILIPINO
Private interest in land in the Philippines is so pervasive that the welfare objectives upon which land use planning is found like “distributive justice”, “equitable access to benefits of land use”, “land as natural resource” and not as a commodity of trade” are confined to the realm of rhetoric. Untrammeled private interest in land has two manifestations. One is a highly skewed pattern of land ownership. The other is a weak State incapable of effecting redistributive justice and social equity objectives.
To the Filipino land is life. To the dispossessed, to acquire land has become an obsession, to at least have a share of this earth, a little place they can call their own. To the one who acquired too much, land is life – and more. It adds to the holder social status, enormous wealth, and political power.
LAND USE PLANNING IMPLICATIONS OF THE LGC
In the advent of the Local Government Code of 1991 (RA 7160 the regulation of land use through the comprehensive land use plans enacted through zoning ordinances has been devolved to LGUs. The code directs to “…continue to prepare their comprehensive land use plans enacted through zoning ordinances which shall be the primary and dominant bases for the future use of land resources…” National government assistance in the form of guidelines and standards formulated by the NEDA and DILG and through Executive Order No. 72, the HLURB. The review and approval of local land use plans have also been transferred to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan in the case of component cities and municipalities, and the Regional Development Council in the case of highly urbanized cities and independent component cities, and the HLURB in the case of provinces.
GOALS OF PRESENT- DAY URBAN PLANNING
The Local Government Code has mandated LGUs to plan and manage their respective territories. Planning is simply defined as the public control of regulation of the pattern of development.
The General Welfare Clause. Urban land use planning entails, among other things, the physical translation of the general welfare clause:
“Every local government unit shall exercise the powers expressly granted, those necessary implied there from, as well as powers necessary, appropriate, or incidental for its efficient and effective governance, and those which are essential to the promotion of the general welfare. Within their respective territorial jurisdictions, local government units shall ensure and support, among other things, the preservation and enrichment of culture, promote health and safety, enhance the right of the people to a balanced ecology, encourage and support the development of appropriate and self reliant scientific and technological capabilities, improve public morals, enhance economic prosperity and social justice, promote full employment among their residents, maintain peace and order, and preserve the comfort and convenience of their inhabitants.”
Often, when formulating their vision statement, LGUs look around everywhere else for ideas but tend to ignore the general welfare clause at the proper source of the goals of local planning and development. Other critics, especially some NGOs claim that the general welfare clause is inadequate as a source of ideas for formulating development goals. Surely, they have not looked at them hard enough.
Vision of the “Good” City. Hildebrand Frey envisions a good or livable city as one in which the hierarchy of human needs is adequately provided. Frey adopts Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs as follows: the most basic are those for air, water, food, shelter, sleep and sex. Next comes the need for safety and security. Then, as the individual feels more secure, he seeks to satisfy his need for love and belongingness, for self- esteem, and esteem from others. Beyond these basic needs are yet higher needs which are no longer hierarchal but nevertheless interrelated. These higher needs include truth, order, justice, beauty, unity, comfort, and self sufficiency.
Based on these concepts of basic and higher needs, Frey takes an inventory of what a good city should provide its citizens:
1. Provision for all physical needs
· A place to live and work
· Reasonable income
· Education and training
· Transport and communications
· Access to services and facilities
2. Security, safety and protection
· A visually and functionally ordered and controlled environment
· A place free of pollution and noise
· A place free of accidents and crime
3. A conducive social environment
· A place where people have their roots and children their friends
· A sense of community and belonging to a place or territory
4. A good image, reputation, prestige
· A place that provides a sense of confidence and strength
· A place that gives status and dignity
· A place that offers opportunity for individuals to shape their personal space
5. A chance to be creative
· A place that allows communities to shape their own districts and neighborhoods
6. An aesthetically pleasing environment
· A place that is well designed (aesthetically pleasing)
· A place that is physically imageable
· A place the promotes culture and is itself a work of art
URBAN RENEWAL OR REDEVELOPMENT
In the Philippines, renewal or redevelopment of slums and blighted areas usually results in increased densities in inner city areas. The conservation of single storey make shift dwellings to permanent medium rise walk up apartments increases residential density.
For urban renewal schemes to become sustainable, treatment should not be limited to residential redevelopment. Job creation must also be incorporated in urban renewal or redevelopment programs b allowing mixed use developments provided these are compatible with residential use.
DEMAND MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
This set of strategies could be considered as alternative to or complementary to the supply- augmentation strategies. The effect of the urban form of the following strategies is the same as those of the supply- management approaches, that is, they encourage compact built forms resulting in more efficient use of lands for human settlements.
Improved Rural Services. By improving the level of welfare of rural residents their desire to migrate to the urban areas might be dampened to some extent. To create this desired effect, development intervention should be one that will tend to weaken rather than strengthen the urge for rural-urban migration. Examples of intervention that reduce the rural-urban population flow are agrarian reform, rural resettlement, irrigation development, rural electrification, potable water supply and efficient rural telecommunications.
Relocation or Resettlement. This is an effective way of decentralizing the urban population. But the economic and social costs are high both to the relocated families and to the society in general. Social benefit-cost calculations should be made before any decision to adopt this option is taken.
Title: Eco Master Planning
Author: Ken Yeang
Date Published: 2009
Fundamental to the ecomasterplan is its green infrastructure, a framework that enables the organization of human life around nature, as an armature of the design landscape. It is the provision f this eco infrastructure that differentiates an authentic ecocity from others which are simply aggregates of eco-engineering and hardware.
The green infrastructure is essentially a network of interconnected natural areas and open space within the site that links to those outside it. It enables conservation of natural features and characteristics within the site, maintenance of ecological connectivity and nexus between habitats, and retention of the ecosystems’ integrity and functions. Further, it serves to sustain clean air and water to create a greater habitat for sharing resources among species, to provide channels for species movement and interaction as well as a wider array of other development opportunities for the flora and fauna.
The green infrastructure occupies the site, providing an ecological framework and nexus across its entirety and retaining links to surrounding green belts and habitats.
HABITAT CONNECTIVITY
Climate change has let to evidence of the migration of organisms as they shift their ranges towards cooler climates. The migration translates into ecological disruption as organisms encounter obstructions in our built environment (roads, drains, hardscapes, buildings, etc) to their migration. Creating landscape corridors allows species safe passage.
To maintain connectivity, for instance across roads and highways, other obstructions and impervious hardscapes surfaces, the green infrastructure can be designed to span these by means of ‘eco bridges’, wide bridges that are landscaped and laid over roads and passageways or, similarly, as ‘eco- undercrofts’. These devices stitch together all the green areas and enable the green infrastructure to criss- cross interconnected over the entire terrain. Of course, conventional masterplans may lay claim to promoting similar corridors; however, upon closer inspection, physical continuity is usually found to be non- existent or virtual – while the green spaces with in such masterplans are laid out to indicate an intended ecological corridor, they in fact fail to connect and ae actually dissected by roads and other built structures.
Eco masterplanning ensures that this green infrastructure is purposefully integrated with other infrastructures, such as with the blue infrastructure, the grey infrastructure and with red infrastructure.
The eco infrastructure thus functions to provide the following outcomes: cleaner and enhanced water supplies ans source water protection; purer air; reduced urban heat island effect; moderation of impact of climate change and increased energy efficiency.
Design begins with the identification of the site’s existing green routes and potential for new connections. This green infrastructure will become the wildlife corridor, linking new green spaces with larger habitats, as green routes through existing urban areas connecting to other urban areas and even larger green areas. These corridors also form new habitats in their own right. They connect wildlife corridors that already exist, for example, in the for of woodland belts or wetlands, vestigial agricultural land and vegetated stands, existing landscape features such as over grown railway lines, and green areas beside waterways.
This green infrastructure, then, lies not just within the site but is connected to other larger habitats external to the site, so that the entire region becomes an expanded network of green infrastructures.
INTEGRATING URBAN FORM
The eco infrastructure can also serve to define the hierarchy and form of habitats and natural green spaces within a human community, and also the region framed by the scale and form of the urban development and its associated engineering infrastructure. Its networks would be integrated to establish links with the valuable natural features of the locality, and at the same time would interweave the functional requirements of urban form, and new green space provision, with habitat networks and with other ecological services such as sustainable drainage infrastructure.
This green infrastructure in the eco- masterplan becomes the dominant green framework within the site and across its landscape. As nature’s infrastructure and as a design principle, the green infrastructure should have precedence over the grey infrastructure in the masterplan to create, strengthen and rehabilitate ecological connectivity across the landscape. In this way, he plan’s subsequent insertion of the red infrastructure on to the natural environment will result in a environmentally positive contribution, conserving the ecology as opposed to causing ecological disruptions.
This green infrastructure must be an essential and integral component at all levels of urban planning (national, regional and local). It might be regarded as part of existing conservation practices in sustainable resource management – particularly relating to the sustainable management of land, ecosystems and water resources, including production (energy and food crops), pollution control, climate amelioration and increased porosity of land cover. It is vital to biodiversity, particularly in relating habitats at a variety of landscape scales. We need to be clearer, however. That the design of this green infrastructure differs from conventional open space master planning because it requires ecological connectivity and considers multiple functions and benefits for the locality’s ecosystems and green spaces in concert with land development, urban growth management and engineering infrastructural planning.
Environmental benefits of eco- infrastructures include:
· Carbon sinks – to absorb carbon dioxide. Studies have shown, for example that 1 hectare of woodland can absorb emissions equivalent to 100 family cars
· Pollution control – attenuating noise and filtering air pollution from motor vehicles; removal of sulfur dioxide and reduction of particulates by up to 75 percent. Noise attenuation can be as much as 30 decibels per 100 meters. Wetland ecosystems are also effective in filtering polluted run off and sewage.
· Natural cooling – reducing heat island effect, which otherwise can increase urban temperatures – relative to those in open countryside – by up to 5°C. Vegetation in the eco- infrastructure provides natural cooling. A single large tree can be functionally equivalent to five room air conditioners and supply enough oxygen for 10 people.
· Micro- climate control – improving local microclimate conditions by providing shade in summer; reducing wind effects created by streets and wind loads on buildings, potentially cutting heating requirements by up to 25 percent
· Flood prevention – reducing excessive run- off and increasing rainfall capture. This reduces the risk of flooding in low- lying areas and can also recharge moisture and groundwater.
· Biodiversity enhancement – providing a broad framework for natural systems and their functions that are fundamental to species and habitat viability, healthy soils, water and air. It ensure a wide level of species connectivity, interaction, mobility and sharing of resources across boundaries. Such real ecological improvements in connectivity enhance biodiversity and bolster habitat resilience and species survival.
Title: New Urbanism and Beyond
Author: Tigran Haas
Date Published: 2008.
THE CITIES WITHIN THE CITY
In matters of architecture and urbanism, fundamental principles are of universal value, but realizations are always local and regional, adapted to specific climates, topography, social habits, materials, and industry – i.e., to geographic/ ecological and cultural contexts. Sustainable means ecological, and has nothing to do with progress, modernism, ideology, advanced or reactionary attitudes, creativity, industry, or economy as they have been propagated for the last two centuries.
Waste equals food is a crucial urban principle because it allows to conceive of regenerative, closed- loop system on multiple scales, from the community garden to the regional economy. Applied to design, it translates first of all into safe, healthful material flows that generate no waste. Safe manufacturing and cradle to cradle material flows not only to ensure that the materials built with are beneficial, they also provide clean, productive economic base for healthy urban growth. By eliminating the very concept of waste, human industry becomes a regenerative thread in the urban fabric.
On the scale of building an community design, closing the loop allows us to respond to natural flows of water and energy. Closing the loop on water flows means designing a site in harmony with local topography, soil, and vegetation so that rainwater percolates slowly through the earth and follows a natural course through the watershed rather than racing down a concrete culvert. This may be the most important consideration for architects and planners.
The second principle of good design recognizes the unlimited energy of the sun, which powers nature’s cradle to cradle cycles and provides the earth’s only perpetual source of energy income.
All of these developments will influence the future. While natural light and fresh air are becoming more common elements in the energy systems of new buildings, the direct use of solar and wind power is not often seen as a viable option.
As urban residents enjoy the benefits of cleaner air, the demand for renewable power will transform wind into a new cash crop.
The third principle, celebrate diversity recognizes that all healthy ecosystems – natural and urban – require a multiplicity of interdependent forms. In a healthy ecosystem, each organism fits exquisitely in its place and in each system an abundance of fitting organisms thrive together. In short, evolution generates biodiversity.
Title: Environmentally Responsible Design
Author: Dr. Louise Jones
Date Published: 2008.
RELATIONSHIP OF HUMANS AND NATURE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
In much of the ancient world, nature was regarded with awe and fear; people were thought to be helpless in the face of its power. Architecture in ancient cities, was, by its very nature, environmentally responsible. Construction technology was based on manual labor, working with regionally availably materials that satisfied the demands of climate and topography.
The design and construction of high performance buildings is dynamic and evolving. It is commonly recognized that a whole building, integrated- design approach is most effective when implementing environmentally responsible design criteria. This ensures the optimal performance for the desired design goals. It is critically important that valid evaluation systems are available to set parameters that can improve quality, decrease the life cycle environment impact and optimize life cycle costs of the buildings. These rating systems must provide the data required to support innovative principles and practices that protect people’s health and well being as well as planet earth’s health and well being. Only then will this generation be able to meet their needs without negating the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
The Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) was developed in United Kingdom in 1990, making it the oldest of the commonly used assessment methods. Offices, homes, schools, industrial and retail units, are among the range of building types BREEAM explicitly addresses. In addition, other building types can be assessed using custom made versions of BREEAM.
the BREEAM evaluative categories for design and procurement include the following:
· Management (commissioning, monitoring, waste recycling, pollution minimization, materials minimization)
· Health and Well being (adequate ventilation, humidification, lighting, thermal comfort)
· Energy (submetering, efficiency, and CO2 impact of systems)
· Transport (emissions, alternate transport facility)
· Water (consumption reduction, metering, leak detection)
· Materials (asbestos mitigation, recycling facilities, reuse of structures, façade, or materials, use of crushed aggregate and sustainable timber)
· Land (previously used land, use of remediated contaminated land)
· Ecology (land with low ecological value or minimal change in value, maintaining major ecological systems on the land, minimization of biodiversity impacts)
· Pollution (leak detection systems, on- site treatment, local or renewable energy sources, light pollution design, nonuse of ozone depleting, and global warming substances)
Title: Designing Community
Author: David Walters
Date Published: 2007.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE PLANNING PROCESS AND THE CHANGING ROLE OF URBAN DESIGN
“…This demonstrates how planning theory and practice abandoned its original concepts and methods of physical design and master plans in favor of a quasi- scientific, open ended system approach to problem solving….”
Title: Urban Design for an Urban Century
Author/s: Lance Jay Brown, David Dixon, Oliver Gillham
Date Published: 2009.
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