Last week, our subdivision was without power for almost six hours. The reason: a backhoe passing through our subdivision's main street (which had also become a secondary road of sorts in San Pedro City) snagged some wires and brought down an electric post in the process.
Only through the round-the-clock work of linemen ensured that electricity was restored just in time for us to prepare for the rest of our day, but our troubles are far from over.
As I am writing this article, some Internet lines still haven't been restored. And in a world where the Internet has become a "necessity" like food and clothing, this was a burdensome trial for those who rely on the Internet to work.
So many issues were raised for me by that one simple incident, but for now, let’s tackle one: the lack of comprehensive urban planning that has resulted in some major headaches for residents living in San Pedro City and other urban areas in the Philippines.
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To be clear here: I am not an engineer, nor an architect, nor an urban planner like Felino "Jun" Palafox (what a pity he's thoroughly ignored here in the Philippines, as he's a major proponent of comprehensive urban planning that I am going to discuss here).
But it does not take an engineer or an architect to understand that planning communities meant more than simply building houses or apartment complexes or laying down streets.
Remember what I said a few weeks back about Singapore avoiding massive flooding because of tight regulations that ensure that flood control must be an integral part of architectural design?
The same goes with laying down other utilities like water, electricity, or Internet, not to mention ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the people who will live in these residential complexes.
Our subdivision was built in the late 1980’s, at a time when boomtown fever was acute in San Pedro City. It was a period when vast subdivisions replaced what were once ricefields and sampaguita plantations, and people were finding San Pedro City the ideal place to live and raise families.
Thinking back, I believe our subdivision’s developers should’ve foreseen the problems that its current residents face now: rapid (and runaway) urbanization, the fact that our main street is now also the main road in which buses and trucks now pass through, not to mention heavy flooding during the rainy season.
No provisions were made for sidewalks, which meant that pedestrians walking along our main road are now at higher risk of being run down by buses and trucks.
No provisions were made for drainage, and only in recent years was an attempt made by the city government to widen its drainage – without success.
No provisions were made for the possibility of underground cabling, which has become the norm for some major urban areas in the Philippines. The result: low, dangling wires that now pose a danger to pedestrians and motorists – a factor in the six-hour nightmare we all faced last week.
We are, unfortunately, paying the price now for the “devil-may-care” approach to community-building that was adopted in Metro Manila and surrounding areas in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
And even though the newest residential complexes have now (belatedly) ensured every possible contingency in their building plans, retrofitting our current infrastructure would entail the government millions, not to mention the headache of disrupting our residents’ daily lives.
But what’s the alternative? Keeping the status quo of urban suffering?
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