Clogged Drains, U-turn slots and Parochial Politicians

So while we were wooohoooing! our way down Roxas Blvd… I couldn’t help but realize how boneheaded the Pasay City admin is by filling up the side-channels along Roxas Blvd’s main island. That’s just plain stupidity! By doing so, you are closing/clogging up the road’s main drainage system… This is going to lead to flooding along the main island… hay naku!

 

This is such a big frustration for me… because… in arki … we get trained to design what’s right and what works for a given situation. We get to create our own “ideal” cities/urban settings/buildings on paper. Literally, we get the training needed to help transform and change the world! Or at least our physical/built environment…

 

But the problem is that once we get out into the real world… we need clients to build… we need clients to make a change… So every time I see something so obviously screwed-up in our cities, I feel the urge to write or rant about it, because I know that unless I’m mayor or at least a person with influence/power, I won’t be able to affect major changes into our physical/built environment.

 

Which leads me to this question… Why are so many of our politicians (especially in the executive/LGU branch of government) lawyers? Shouldn’t lawyers be pigeonholed together in the legislative and judiciary branches of government? Shouldn’t more engineers, architects, urban planners, professional managers and economists be the ones in the executive branch? And less of the usual pa-pogi, parochial/sticky-phlegm politicians (which include lawyers, wash-out artistas, and their family members)

 

I mean… with all due respect to all the good lawyers and artistas... and to their family members narin… shouldn’t you stick to what you were trained to do? And do it well? Sure, if you want to serve… can you at least leave it to the ones who were trained to do these very critical “city-building” activities for you?

 

Case-in-point… two very effective current and former local government officials…   Manila mayor Lito Atienza and MMDA chair Bayani Fernando… Ironically, despite their arguments, they have been the most effective in turning around their cities and effectively improving their respective built environments… Lito Atienza is effective, because he has a strong idea of good urban design… why? Well he spent 1-2 years  in UST Arki as an undergrad, plus the fact that he is in touch with planners and design professionals who know what they are doing… of course he isn’t perfect, but hopefully his efforts snowball into more effective, accessible, interconnected parks, transport systems, etc. (One thing… his housing initiative I think is a bit lacking… mainly because of the sheer lack of buildable public land to devote for socialized housing projects in his city)

 

Bayani Fernando… despite all the criticism, get things done… he moves projects… why? He’s a trained civil engineer… and that’s what engineers do… get things done! Those heavily-criticized pink fences and footbridges? The agency actually commissioned an industrial/signage designer to find a color that would be instantly identifiable with cleanliness and urbanity… and that’s a sign of professionalism… he allowed people to do what they are good at! Those U-turn slots fences along Quezon avenue and Edsa? Well… believe it or not… are actually the work of traffic engineers who took their cue from New Jersey’s jughandles and interchanges… The term for this in traffic engineering is the great rotunda system… which is supposed to allow for free-flow of vehicles… of course, the system has had its share of hitches, but that will always happen, because they tried to implement a concept on an existing urban framework which doesn’t have much space to allow for optimum design. Ideally, the u-turn slots should be traffic jug-handles on the right side… but given our current road infrastructure, they had to make do with what we have.

 

So anyway… where am I leading to? I think I want to run for mayor of Paranaque in the distant future… hahahahaha… nah… just kidding…