Post-pandemic perspectives: Pinoy architects envision urban spaces that are greener and more resilient
Pinoy architects envision urban spaces that are greener and more resilient
Do you want to go back to that kind of Metro Manila?” A few months ago, you (and a lot of Filipinos) undergo that kind of “routine,” where you wake up at 5 a.m. just to fall in line at the base of an MRT station, where you endure pollution from jeepneys and buses, where you spend the majority of the day in cold gray spaces, and where the crawling traffic pushes your dinner time to midnight.
Now, as the lockdown will soon be relaxed and lifted in some areas, comes the realization that the Covid-19 pandemic is not forever. There will come a day when we will all emerge from our “cocoons” finding out that, yes, things have changed—we have cleaner air, roads have fewer cars, and open spaces are greener.
We will all have an epiphany that it is not too late to dream and demand better things for the metro. We can’t go back to the way it was before, especially as the new normal rolls in. Past is past. And enough is enough.
Manila Bulletin Lifestyle invited
three architects—William Ti, Erick
Yambao, and Louwie Gan—to envision in words and sketches what an ideal post-pandemic Metro Manila should look like. All of them, pre-Covid era, have advocated some sort of “urban renewal.” Sad to say, a lot of their proposals landed on deaf ears. This pandemic, for whatever it’s worth, has placed a spotlight on them, putting their proposals at the forefront.
It now depends on whether decision makers (government), financiers (businesses), and users (public) can find a consensus or a common ground to finally “cure” the root design flaws of the metro.