Revtalizing Old Downtowns: Heritage Conservation Summit 2014

I attended the 3rd Heritage Conservation Summit held in Iloilo last October 25, 2014. It was supposed to be a three-day event, with the first day meant for an exclusive group of heritage building owners and the third day for a tour around Iloilo. I lived in Iloilo for two years so I decided against the tour, and since I'm not a heritage building owner I also skipped that one. (I learned later on that they opened the activity to everyone).

The last time I set foot in Iloilo was 14 years ago. Everything has totally changed of course. The airport is new, SM was not there yet, and even the hotel where I stayed (Sarabia Manor Hotel) was located somewhere else back then. First on my list when I arrived was to eat La Paz Batchoy. I prefer eating Batchoy only when I'm in Iloilo! The next item on my list was to find my old friends. Thanks to the internet, we managed to get connected again.

The summit was a huge success: more people came than expected, everything was on time, the audience actively participated, the place was full of people until the end, and the talks were very relevant. I also got to talk to a lot of people who are advocates of heritage conservation. It was refreshing to share ideas with non-architects. In my table alone there were two ladies from Dumaguete (an interior designer and a teacher in tourism), there was a lady who already migrated to New Zealand (a retired public school teacher), the owner of the Ruins in Bacolod and his three friends.

Iloilo did a very good job in revitalizing their downtown. When I stayed there I didn't notice that all the buildings lining up the street of Calle Real were American period structures. Now that they cleaned up the building, everything just looked different and fascinating. There is a lot to learn in Iloilo in revitalizing a heritage district and I am inspired to bring everything I learned to Cebu.

In the conference, speakers from Iloilo, Escolta, and Vigan shared their success stories. There were also people from agencies who can be partners in the revitalization efforts who shared how they can help. There were also a couple of tech experts who shared some tools in documenting heritage sites and structures using the internet and other visualization software. It had the complete ingredients for the theme of the summit.

In Cebu, where I stay, the mayor just announced that he is setting aside funds to revitalize Colon Street, I wondered if his plan is based on some studies. His effort to revitalize the American-period Osmena Boulevard was a blooper when he announced that he was going to bring it back to its glory during the Spanish era. I am now inspired to organize a similar conference focusing only on Colon St. By inviting the building owners to listen how their businesses can flourish when the place is revitalized, I'm sure that the mayor's plan will be a total success.

I am sure that every participant in that summit is moved, one way or another, to do something for their own hometown. My idea for a conference on Colon Street is just one of the many ideas I came up with. I guess this is the best measure of success of the summit, when it managed to move everyone to action. I am now looking forward to the next summit. I missed the first two previous summits, I am determined not to miss any of it in the future.

Participants of the summit take a group pic. I was at the right. We were so many I didn't fit in the picture. My pose went to waste.

My take on the Green Loop Experiment

The Green Loop Project is a very big project that one can not simply implement in a single stage. It requires complex planning since it involves three local government units and different sectors of society are also affected. At this stage, all we have is a concept. The University of San Carlos may have developed some schemes on how it would look like but these are all conceptual.

As a concept the Green Loop project is a very good project. I think everyone would agree. Imagine a loop that has bike lanes, tree-lined, pedestrian and pwd friendly.Then imagine this road connecting various destinations in the four LGUs then enhancing these destinations by pocket parks and other public places so that people from clustered buildings get together. Imagine this loop to be part of the disaster risk and management plan of Cebu making emergency calls and response very efficient. Who would not like that? The city even endorsed the Green Loop proposal as its entry to the Livable City Design Challenge.

This concept, no matter how beautiful, must be tested to see how it can be refined and made more realistic. I believe that it is in this spirit that the Green Loop experiment was conceived and conducted. The experiment was used to gather data not to make the traffic smooth. Of course it has its inconveniences! In fact, the first time I heard about the experiment I already imagined all the complaints of people, especially the lazy ones. It is laughable to hear all the complaints afterwards.

What I find amusing also is that some complaints are based on "perceived" situations. During the experiment, I was staying in Jolibee in Escario all the time because of problems with my right foot. My students in the graduate program, together with some people from the College of Arts and Sciences of USC were all over the loop doing interviews. I decided to observe the flow of traffic from where I was seated and discovered the traffic was flowing constantly although in a slow pace. It would only stop for less than a minute before it goes again and it takes several minutes in each stop. I was actually expecting traffic to stop for several minutes and flow for only a few seconds (opposite to what actually happened). When I interviewed some people myself (like taxi drivers and bystanders), they told me that traffic was not flowing at all. This was their main complaint.

Some people confuse reality with their imagination. Some people have different standards of calling things. For them, traffic flowing slowly, no matter how constant, is considered not flowing. This is why I decided not to take these opinions very seriously. It would be better to work on empirical data.

After that experiment, I thought of a number of ways that the project should do to move forward. I think everyone will agree that the main problem, where the success of the Green Loop is hinged on, is that there are simply too many cars on the streets. Strategies should be made to lessen the volume of cars. I made an initial list which I hope to study further in this coming days:

1. We can start by putting bike lanes on the streets. Nothing encourages biking more than a permanent bike lane. We have already made so many of these Sunday bike lanes. It is starting to sound impractical. The route should be well studied so that people find it useful and practical so they will actually want to use it.
2. Introduce buses to handle more commuters. This should be very easy to implement but it requires political will (the only factor making it difficult). If people find buses very intimidating then we can make an innovation... let us make the jeepneys bigger! They're starting to make jeeps out of elfs. This should be encouraged and those smaller jeeps should be kept off the streets.
3. Start building walkable communities. This is an idea we got in USC when we were going over the Green Loop project. Identify a cluster of buildings, connect them with a plaza, then provide amenities like stores, toilets, restaurants. The idea is to keep people from going far to eat, to meet, or simply to spend their free time.

These ideas are all implementable with very little inconvenience to the general public. I'm sure that other people have more ideas on how to lessen the volume of cars on the road. I get a lot of comments that Filipinos do not like to walk. Some reasons: no sidewalk and no protection from heat or rain. I worked in Makati for four years and after getting down the bus I would walk several blocks to my office simply because it is faster than waiting and taking the jeepney! Besides, the walk is pleasant with all the sidewalks there. From these we have two learnings: make good sidewalks and make public transport inefficient for short travels. The latter can achieved by enforcing a jeepney stop strategy....

All these problems are solvable. We need people who can do more than just complain. We have a lot of people who are very good in complaining. We might as well have a contest on who complains the most and make money out of this contest.

The Movement for Livable Cebu should not be affected by these complaints, even if it comes from newspapers. For me, they simply don't have anything to write about and they don't have some good ideas in their heads. I even heard a colleague in school saying the Green Loop is a good idea but it is not for us here in Cebu! What a loser!

Through the Green Loop experiment we managed to make more people know about it. This is a strategy of politicians who want to run for office. All they need to do is let their names stick to the minds of people either because they did something good or they did something bad. During election, people tend to vote for names that are familiar to them, regardless if the person is a criminal or a saint.

Through the Green Loop experiment we also identify those people who simply complain and do nothing, especially people who think that progress is not for Cebu and that we should just continue living a miserable life forever. By knowing who they are we will know who to ignore.

Vernacular In Our Time

I was accompanying the team of USC-CTU-FWU students doing a survey in Taloot, Argao, and I decided to walk around the area where they are doing interviews. Our area is along the river leading up to a spring. I noticed that all the houses have the following in common: an outhouse, a "dirty" kitchen, and a lantay.

THE OUTHOUSE

The outhouse is simply a toilet outside the main house. Since the barangay does not yet have a public sewerage system each house resorts to an outdoor toilet above a seepage pit.

This one has walls made of amakan.

This toilet is made of masonry and is shared by two houses, the house of a parent and the house of their daughter.

This is an outhouse of a house made of concrete. This outhouse has galvanized iron sheets for walls.

THE "DIRTY KITCHEN"

The origin of the modern day dirty kitchen which is now attached to the main house. Since cooking was done using firewood and charcoal, the kitchen was placed away from the main house.

THE LANTAY

More than a piece of furniture, the lantay has become a small public space in a cluster of houses. It is a place with seats which are deep enough for sleeping.

The basic lantay is a single seat. It is placed near the pathways so people resting on the lantay get to greet the passers by and engage them in conversation.

This one has two seats form an L to facilitate conversation, especially with a few glasses of bahalina.

Another version of the L-shaped arrangement.

 This version has a protective roofing.

 This is a modified tree house type. It is also placed near the pathway so people can just drop by for a chit chat or simply to rest.

This one has a store attached to it. Perfect for resting with some bottles of beer or bahalina

Thoughts on WAF Shortlisting in USC-CAFA

This afternoon the shortlisting for the entry for the World Architecture Forum was done. To determine who gets to represent USC for the competition, the last year's winners organized a qualifying competition during the summer break.The competition calls for the design of a satellite city which should be on a brownfield area, particularly an old airport site. During the preliminary presentations, the jury decided to make all the participant present again but using the Mactan airport as site instead of a hypothetical one.

There were ten entries but I only got to listen to the last half of the presentors. I am not very familiar with the details of the competition problem but after listening to the groups who presented I thought that all of them should have followed the process below:

First, they should have considered the "existing conditions" when the airport has moved out. Archt Sia pointed out that the MEPZ might also go as a result of this. What else would go? The tourism sector? the golf course? Most of the presenters did not even include land uses and road networks immediately surrounding their sites. It is as if they are designing a purely independent development.

Second, they should have established the relationship of the project with its neighbors: the nearest neighbor around the site, then the more remote neighbor (mainland Cebu). This relationship should then translate to land use and transportation linkages. There were very few who considered this. They did not even bother to indicate how existing roads connect to their development. And land use? No one presented how they arrived at the area allocation of each land use. There was a proposal where majority of the site is open space... will the remaining economic activity sustain the satellite city?

Third, they should have designed for self sustainability. It is true that they have to link up with other places but this is a satellite city after all, so it should be able to stand on its own.

They should have introduced the urban design strategies on land use and transportation as the last step. These are the details. To many presentors, they concentrated on enumerating these at the start not mindful of how they tie up with the grand scheme of things.

Aside from the above observations, I also noticed that most groups do not know how to make good use of the time alloted to them for presenting their proposal. They were only given 10 minutes. This is half of the allocated time to present a thesis. Instead of going directly to their analysis and solution, most of them spend half of their time on the introduction. There really was no need to inform everyone the history of the Philippines or Cebu, or what are the existing conditions (since the hypothetical future is more important). To make it worse, they deliver this with so much theatrics. It gives you the impression that they are more concerned with entertaining the audience than presenting a solution.

Anyway, my friends told me that two groups were selected with the idea of combining them, and a couple of other individuals were also added to the mix. The first is the group of Micmic Kindica, the other is the group of Steffi Go. I didn't get the names of the two other persons.

I didn't get to listen to the group of Micmic, but while they were preparing outside the lecture theater they showed me their boards. I didn't really grasp their solution by looking at the boards alone so I simply pointed out my observation on the relationships particularly the existing road network. Apparently this is something that Archt. Maxwell Espina kept looking for in the proposals I witnessed.

I listened through the presentation of Steffi's group. My impression was that they were designing the city in the manner of modernists. It reminded me of Le Corbusier's City of Three Million but in a very small scale. Archt. Maxwell summed up my observation when he called it "dehumanizing." There was a bright side in their design, but it was all thanks to Archt. Yumi Espina who pointed out that the other half of the site which they left for green space could be treated similar to New York's central garden. The concept was good, although it was not intentional and they need to rework the interpretation.

Overall it was a very good exercise. I hope all the students learned from it. The group of students chosen to represent USC are very good students and I am sure that the jury, composing of no less than architects Buck Sia, Alexius Medalla, Maxwell Espina, Yumi Espina and Bro. Lanyi will help them refine their solutions and come up with the best scheme.

I was very happy that many students took part in this competition despite the half-hearted support they've been getting. I hope that those who were not chosen would not consider all of these as a waste of time. For all they know, they have learned more here that they would in normal circumstances.