Paulo Alcazaren—landscape architect, urban planner, design principal of PGAA International, Bluprint magazine editor-in-chief and City Sense columnist for the Philippine Star, alumni of the National University of Singapore with a Masters degree in Urban Design—has dreams shared by millions.
His sketches of ideas for redesigning Metro Manila are viral memes shared by thousands on social media, published by newspapers, and broadcasted on television. His articles, interviews, and columns resonate and uplift people who share his dreams. he makes sense to people who wish he was in charge. To adobo magazine, Alcazaren reveals the realities of trying to make a dream city come true.
You have a large following on social media, considering your focus on heritage, design, and urbanism. Why do you think people are interested in your posts about architecture, public space, and our cities?
Alcazaren: I believe that it is mainly a frustration in our communal urban condition. Traffic, pollution, blight, susceptibility to natural disasters, and the lack of open or green space, do not make for an acceptable quality of life for Filipinos in cities. You must remember that today, six out of ten Filipinos live in town or cities. Two out of ten Filipinos live in large metropolitan clusters like Metro Manila and Metro Cebu. These are made of many cities and towns, which contain several dense and blighted old inner centers surrounded by a homogenous mess of unmitigated urban sprawl.
Is this because our towns and cities, and especially Metro Manila, have not been planned properly?
Alcazaren: I’m asked this question often. Our urban history shows that over the last century Manila (and later Metro Manila) has had four major master plans, along with another four or five minor revisions of them. These started with the ambitious plan for Manila drawn up by the famous American architect and city planner, Daniel Burnham, in 1905. The last master plan for the metropolis was prepared in the 1970s by the Metro Manila Commission. Most of the major cities in the country also had plans drawn up by the government through the Bureau of Public Works before WWII and by the National Planning Commission until this office was shut down in the early 1960s. The vagaries of history—war, political upheavals, land speculation, and a cumbersome urban political structure—prevented any of these plans from being fully realized. As the saying goes, [paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin,] “If you fail to plan (and implement these plans), you plan to fail.”
Is the mess of Metro Manila and other cities because of lack of political will?
Alcazaren: On the contrary, in the case of Metro Manila, there are 17 political wills. Actually, 18, if you count national government, which runs the DPWH [Department of Public Works and Highways] and has oversight over authorities like the MMDA [Metro Manila Development Authority], the PPA [Philippine Ports Authority], the LLDA [Laguna Lake Development Authority], and the DENR [Department of Environment and Natural Resources], all of which play a role in making any initiatives at a metropolitan scale. Nothing gets done in Metro Manila, as well as other large metropolitan clusters. Too many cooks spoil the pot. Politicians hardly talk to each other. Hardly anyone takes responsibility for problems that cross over political boundaries; and traffic, pollution, flooding and crime do not recognize political boundaries.
So innovative architecture is not at fault?
Alcazaren: We have wonderful Filipino architects, creating great world-class buildings, but the moment you step out of their buildings, you trip over decrepit sidewalks, get run over by traffic, or loose your way in a labyrinth of traffic-clogged streets. There are also city districts, mainly private central business districts, lifestyle enclaves, or ‘mixed-use’ developments, but again they do not fit the larger urban fabric, nor contribute to developing a sense of place that define them beyond corporate agendas of exclusivity, elitism, or profit.
Our environmental planners also do craft competent Comprehensive Land Use Plans (CLUPs), as required by law. They are voluminous in descriptions of goals and mission/vision statements. The physical translations of these, however, leave much to be desired.
In terms of design, and leaving out politics from the equation, there is a gap between architecture (buildings) and large CLUPs, or broad-brush zoning or development plans. What is lacking is the context provided by the open or green spaces in between buildings and an understanding that what makes a proper city is a balance between the solids of architecture and the voids of urban design and landscape architecture.
Why do you post your ‘before and after’ sketches?
Alcazaren: These are called esquisses, or quick sketch concepts. Architectural education in the Philippines was based on the French ecole des beaux artes. We were trained to develop quick design solutions communicated in sketch form (which I find faster than drawing with CADD [computer-aided design and drafting] software). I’ve used this training and method in my career and practice since.
The posts on Facebook are a type of esquisse. The before and after strategy is the same one used by Sir Humphrey Repton, an English Landscape Architect from the 18th century who would do watercolor sketches in portfolios called Red Books (by the color of the cover). I am also influenced by the concepts espoused by Jan Gehl, William Whyte, Ian McHarg, Christopher Alexander, Gordon Cullen and Kevin Lynch.
What design specialty do you practice in?
Alcazaren: My training and academic background is in three fields. I completed by BS Architecture and Bachelor of Landscape Architecture at UP [University of the Philippines] Diliman. I have a masters degree in Urban Design from the National University of Singapore. I practice as a landscape architect and urban designer. This has mostly been for my own firm, which originated in 1982 as a partnership and which I continue today as PGAA Creative Design. I established the Singapore and Kuala Lumpur offices of the practice in 1989 and 1992 respectively. Today the practice is a multi-office affiliation in Manila and Singapore. We have associated firms we collaborate with in Kuala Lumpur and Mumbai.
