Population density and COVID

The COVID pandemic has shown us how difficult it is to manage viral infections of such proportions when there is overcrowding. The government has already spent all its time, spent and borrowed 1/3 of its annual budget just to contain the spread of the pandemic, and there has been slow stimulus done or attention given to businesses to restart. Cases keep on increasing due to lack of social distancing and crowd control in the congested areas, while many of the gated subdivisions have done very well to control the spread of the disease since about two months. This is the right time for government urban planners to work at decongesting the national capital region slums and congested areas, and make this very high priority. COVID does not seem to be going away soon from us, unlike the other more disciplined countries.

Wikipedia ranks the first three (3) cities as having the worst densities in the world, as follows: 1. Manila 46,768 per sq. km, 2. Pateros 36,447 , and 3. Mandaluyong 34,925. Makati, Caloocan and Malabon are in the more than 25,000 range, and Quezon City, with 17,759. Any plans to move the population to the sparsely-peopled areas like Mindanao, like “Balik Probinsya”, are long shots for now, and can wait for better planning and more time. Quick solution to decongesting Metro Manila is the red flag now!

London has 5,700 per sq. km and still the people there consider their city as crowded. What would be the ideal density for a city? Some of the capital territories and cities in Australia have 8,000 per sq. m. to 10,000 densities and yet the Australian Prime minister was quoted as saying this is not yet ideal and that the optimal population density should be a 30-minute ride to the office or to school.

The crowded slums in Metro Manila have blunted government efforts to contain the COVID. The slum dwellers are better housed in high-rise governmentfunded condominiums, which can increase exponentially the living spaces, and provide more humane existence for them. Think about the enormous challenges of another pandemic in the future if we don’t learn our lessons with COVID-19 and be better prepared for it. If we build spaces upward, we should be able to easily reduce Metro Manila’s population density by at least 50 percent.

– M.K.TAN, Quezon City