Need for more green spaces
Dear Editor,
Going High-Rise is needed to improve urban density and avoid sprawl into agriculture and forest lands as said by Ivan Cortez, the head of CPDO. Mary Ann Fuertes of IDIS stressed that High-Rises must be Green Buildings that use structures and technologies that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient. Both are important goals in an urbanising environment.
An important characteristic of high rise space not be be left out and to be diligently planned in is that there must be sufficient publicly accessible and green open spaces in between and among high rises. It is a characteristic very often overlooked or simply brushed aside because developers want to make as much money as they can and if regulations or the lack of them allow it.
Take the case of North Point in Bajada. It started of as one or two high-rises in a tree-enhanced environment. A friend bought an apartment seeing it as a dream come through. Lately the friend put up her place for sale. Why? Because she realised she has more and more come to live on a “cement mountain” and in a “concrete forest” where green spaces get less and less and are gradually eaten up by new High Rises. A similar story is developing near SM Ecoland where new High Rises gradually eat up what used to be surrounding green space.
New High Rises are in the planning and or selling stage at both ends of Ma-a Road, facing Wood Ridge on the one end, and on the other end where the NCCC department store used to be. In the promotional sales material, a host of features and amenities are listed but nothing about open accessible green space surrounding the buildings.
In the middle of Ma-a Road, near Jollibee Ma-a, on a more or less 2 hectare lot of sloping land, two high rises are being planned with more than 2,200 apartments and more than 830 parking spaces in the lower floors of what are expected to become towers of more than 45 floors. Imagine, more than 9,000 people will be living and working on this 2 hectare space right next to a very busy intersection. Still, no provisions have been set in place for surrounding publicly accessible green open spaces, not for the occupants nor for the surrounding communities.
Still, the developer owns the immediately adjacent 26 hectares of sloping land which is part of the Urban-Ecological Enhancement Sub-Zone of 222 hectares on Shrine Hills. What about making a few hectares there part of Private Owned but Publicly Accessible Open Space (POPOS), which the law provides as an option but does not enforce?
Overall, the point is that green space is hugely important not just as agriculture and forest land surrounding the urbanized core, but as an essential characteristic of city living. And even all the more if High Rise is the way to go.
There is now world-wide agreement, through a consensus developed over the years by the United Nations, and irrespective of whether you live in the North or the South, that urban developers need to plan green open spaces at an equivalent of 9 square meter per urban dweller. What does this mean for Davao City? Out of Davao City’s total land area of 245,000 hectares around 45,000 hectares are urbanized. Given Davao City’s urban population estimates, it would mean that green space in the urbanized area should amount to anywhere from 500 to 750 hectares properly spread out, which is still only 1.6 percent or less of the urban space. With our few parks, we are not even reaching 40 hectares.
Another indicator internationally accepted is “Nature Nearby”, meaning that every urban dweller is entitled to live close to nature in their neighbourhood. As an accepted rule of thumb, no city dweller should live farther away then 350 to 500 meter from some green and accessible open space.
Both the “9 square meter” indicator and the “Nature Nearby” indicator are important categories to be used by our city development planners.