From postcard pretty to urban mess
Today, we continue our series on Philippine plazas, seguing from last week’s feature on Plaza Santa Cruz in Manila. The church is a landmark of the district and is distinctive because of the fact that it is sandwiched between two plazas. We previously looked at the main plaza in front and now we stroll down Plaza Lacson behind it.
Plaza Lacson is a triangular space of about 2,000 sqm. It is defined by the back of the church, commercial buildings, and another heritage structure, the old Prudential Bank building (now a BPI branch). The plaza con-
nects the district to the Arroceros district south of it via the Sta. Cruz Bridge.
The plaza was formerly Plaza Goiti until the Commonwealth period. Before the bridge was built, the open space was most probably used as a muelle (quay) for goods being unloaded from the Pasig. As Binondo and Sta. Cruz districts grew in economic importance to the city, this space became a central space and a point of reference when figuring distances from the suburbs.
The importance of the space also derived from the fact that it was a transport crossroads in the Golden Age of the tranvia. This was where you transferred trams from and to four general directions. From the late 19th century to World War II, the plaza painted a scene of a bustling city, immortalized in a slew of popular postcards.
The trams brought people from north and south of the Pasig River. The plaza connected to Binondo via the famous shopping street of Escolta in the west. It was also a link to all points north of the city via Avenida Rizal. The Avenida morphed into Rizal Avenue in the Commonwealth era. From the late ‘30s until the ‘60s it became the main drag of this city quarter known as Manila’s downtown.
Plaza Goiti was still a prime space in the post-war years. The tranvias disappeared and jeepneys conquered Manila. It brought commuters to offices that only started transferring to Makati and other centers in the 1960s. It also brought crowds to the movie palaces nearby like the Ideal, State, Galaxy, Lyric and Capitol theaters.
The plaza marked the location of major department stores nearby. SM got its start as Shoemart a block away. The Good Earth Emporium was also a 1960s landmark. It boasted the first escalators used for a store in the country.
The plaza, along with the district, lost its luster from the 1970s onwards, as the metropolis expanded and shoppers gravitated to the newer suburban centers in Makati, Greenhills and Cubao. The building of LRT 1 also led to Rizal Avenue’s and the plaza’s journey to urban blight. The renaming of the plaza to honor the colorful former Mayor Arsenio Lacson helped little to add life to the stagnating district.
The plaza brightened up a bit when Mayor Lito Atienza pedestrianized it, along with a section of Rizal Avenue until Claro M. Recto. He had all the utility lines buried, had pedestrian-friendly paving put in, and street furniture added. Jeepney drivers complained, but it worked. Business crept back and rentals, along with property values, kicked up. Building owners, on their own, started to fix and re-paint their buildings and the refreshed district even became a popular part of walking tours for local and foreign tourists.
The Atienza makeover was a successful example of urban regeneration via the improvement of the public realm. He had plans to extend the makeover to other plazas and streets. Unfortunately, politics reared its ugly head. When Mayor Lim regained power he reversed the whole project, giving the streets back to the jeepneys. Blight and mayhem have taken over again.
Plaza Lacson today retains the improved paving and monument setting from the Atienza initiative. It lost the connection to Rizal Avenue, which is now choked with traffic and the dense scrum of flea market kiosks selling everything cheap that China has to offer.
Some of the material for this and last week’s articles were culled from an exhibit of Manila’s plazas that I curated for the Samsung Foundation, with its Samsung Culture Connect program, and mounted at the Yuchengco Museum last year. In that exhibit, I suggested that the two plazas could be integrated with space recovered from vehicular traffic to be given back to pedestrians.
This intervention would be best in tandem with enhancements to Escolta and Rizal Avenue, turning them to at least partially pedestrianized streets. Two more initiatives would greatly insure the area’s revitalization.
First, the city should clear all vendors from sidewalks, arcades and streets. These informal vendors have killed or brought down rental profits of most buildings. They contribute little to the city’s coffers because few pay proper sales taxes (due to the cash nature of transactions). The city should, like Singapore, build hawker centers for these vendors so as to provide opportunities for them while at the same time ensuring order and sanitation.
Secondly, jeepneys should finally be banned from the center of Manila. They were a temporary solution to the loss of the tranvias 70 years ago. It would be faster to walk from Plaza Lacson to CM Recto than to ride a jeepney, if only the arcades and sidewalks were clear of vendors. The jeepneys are also the main source of air pollution and attendant grime.
These two initiatives require political will, but the jeepney and vendors’ lobbies are too strong. Manila’s central districts can never, in my opinion, be revivified without serious efforts towards creating good public spaces, efficient pedestrian systems, better public safety, and a regime of rationality in retail and commercial uses.
As for Plaza Lacson, I would still give it a rating of seven out of 10, as it retains an un-encumbered open space, fairly good paving and a strong identity. Oh, and I’d also suggest strongly controlling billboard and outdoor advertising.
Plaza Lacson today retains the improved paving and monument setting from the Atienza initiative. Today, it has lost the connection to Rizal Avenue, which is now choked with traffic and the dense scrum of flea market kiosks selling everything cheap that
China has to offer.