The path to smart polycentric cities
ARCHITECT Felino “Jun” A. Palafox Jr. has been making the news again in recent months because of his statements that the Philippines can become a first-world country by 2050. All the country needs is long-term visionary planning, considerable private-public sector partnership, enormous funding, and strong, consistent political will.
In the meantime, one way to hasten this evolution steadily is the development of “polycentric cities as opposed to monocentric cities,” says the principal architect, urban planner and founder of Palafox Associates. A polycentric capital IS MORE flUID, flEXIBLE AND QUICK TO respond to its dwellers’ needs, as it grants autonomy to its districts, regions and sub-centers while remaining connected to each other.
What Palafox Associates has been designing to contribute to that trend ARE ITS ELEMENTS: fiVE-MINUTE NEIGHborhoods, 10-minute communities, and 15-minute cities.
Palafox says that the 21st-century homeowners, especially the millennials and older Gen-Zers, prefer to live in spaces that are “resilient, sustainable, livable, and walkable with mass transit. “Abhorring CONGESTED TRAFfiC, THEY PREFER THAT their homes and families living with them are walking distance from their work.
Twenty-four-cycle activity centers are also increasing, especially in the business districts. The explosion of the call center and business processing industry 20 years ago has laid the foundation for all-day, all-night cafes, convenience stores, remote working spaces, gyms and hotels.
As much as they enjoy modern amenities, the young homeowners also look for parks, forests, and proximity to a cleaner natural environment. Palafox notes the post-pandemic composition of the restaurants they have been designing: 50 percent al fresco, 30 percent kitchen, and 20 percent indoor.
Palafox thinks that the young homeowners also “want to look inward.” One result is that malls, often described as cold and commercial, are also acquiring a more personal, homey touch, such as open-air features and community places of worship.
Another surprising development, also triggered by the preference for walkable spaces, is that people “do not like to live anymore within gated communities.”
Palafox describes the advantages of this trend. First, criminality can be reduced; criminals are “more scared of visibility in the public spaces,” in contrast to an exclusive village’s solid walls that can block the presence of more witnesses. He maintains that CCTV cameras are more effective deterrents.
While walkable spaces actually encourage people to breathe and exercise, the solid walls of a village’s houses can trap more heat inside the structures.
Palafox points to Rockwell Center, which they designed, as an example of a walkable neighborhood that maintains seamless connectivity with the rest of Metro Manila. It has no gates, but closes its pathways from 1 to 5 a.m. to remind the public “that they are private roads.”
He also describes the polycentric city and its communities as more inclusive, a breakaway from the exclusionary colonial planning of Spain which, for cenTURIES, INflUENCED THE URBAN PLANning of the modern Philippines. Back then, the houses of the ruling class of the Spanish ilustrados and the principalias were located safely in walled Intramuros; outside it, left to fend for themselves were the native Filipino peasants and the sanglais or the ancestors of the Chinese-Filipinos.
American urban planner Daniel Burnham removed the walls and the exclusion during the Commonwealth era. However, the gated communities returned a few years later as a protective measure for their dwellers. Dead bodies were being found on Highway 54, now known as Epifano De Los Santos Avenue (EDSA), attributed to the attacks of the Hukbalahaps, a Communist guerrilla movement.
The threat and the bodies disappeared, but the gates remained and became models for urban planning.
A young generation “that is more open to change” may soon want to replace — or live outside — them. As Palafox describes their preferences: “It’s no longer location but accessibility, mobility, and connectivity.”