Dignity in and equal access to the urban space

(This revisit of an item six years back comes in the light of a plan to phase out dilapidated jeepneys in Metro-Manila to ease the daily pollution. The experience of Bogota, Colombia in introducing the Transmilenio busing may well be a solution to the daily traffic snarls in the Metropolis, if only jeepney drivers can transform themselves into bus cooperatives. - RD)

mourned the sudden loss of that sidewalk along the

road to Pacdal under the jurisdiction of the Department of Public Works and Highways. Heavy equipment which just scraped it off, from after the Teachers Camp bridge towards the Botanical Garden. The road, a national highway, used to be Leonard Wood Rd., in honor of the American governor general of the Philippines during Baguio’s formative, colonial era. For reasons beyond my capacity to comprehend, the highway was renamed Romulo Drive.

Unlike other national road projects of the DPWH that irritatingly take time to complete, the replacement of the scraped sidewalk was done almost overnight, as if by the stroke of a fairy godmother’s magic wand. In no time, the former sidewalks was re-concreted, but to the level of the road, effectively converting the walkers’ path as additional space for passing vehicles, at the expense of pedestrians.

My eldest brother Joe must be turning in his grave. He used to walk that now erased sidewalk on his way to and from office, almost on a daily consistency. The sidewalk that stretches down to Session Road (including the inclined portion near Mabini Elementary School that has been turned into a hotel parking space) was there as far as I could remember. It was part of the design of the American colonial government to make Baguio, the country’s summer capital, as livable and accessible for both the rich and the poor, the car passenger/owner and the non-vehicle owner who has to walk or ride a jeepney.

InationalIt’s now gone. For solace, I turn to Pete St. John, the Irish journeyman who composed a dirge, “(Dublin in the) Rare Old Times”, to grip and hold on to after he came home, shocked to find how “the grey, unyielding concrete makes a city of my town”.

To cope, I also turn to an opinion piece I composed many years back. It’s about Dr. Enrique Penalosa’s urban landscape. It’s his native city of Bogota, Colombia, high up in the mountains. That’s where the pedestrian or bicycle rider has equal, if not better, access to public space as one aboard a private car. To him, those who have to walk or pedal a bike should have as much mobility as those who can afford cars and limousines.

“I would honor a forty-dollar bicycle as I would a four (or forty) thousand-dollar car,” he told an international forum on the urban planning he keynoted in 2005 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

To him, parks are more important than commercial malls. To him, bicycle lanes and sidewalks are as important as roads. “In public spaces, we meet as equal, regardless of hierarchies,” said the bearded visiting scholar on urban planning of New York University.

During his single, four-year term as mayor of Bogota, Penalosa adopted car-less days. He banned vehicles from being parked on sidewalks and pedestrian walkways. Forced to walk, pedal, or ride the bus during car-less days, car owners moved for a referendum. In a capital city of 6.9 million souls where majority do not have cars, 83 percent voted for more car-free days.

“Getting people out of their cars is a means of social integration,” he pointed out. “You have the upper-income person sitting next to the cleaning lady on the bus.”

Now and then, he would stress, “Acity is made for people, not for cars”. He observed that “throughout history, more people were killed by