Public spaces

PINOY KASI

Public spaces
By Michael Tan

Inquirer
Last updated 06:43am (Mla time) 07/20/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- “And some of them are even locked,” Gilda Cordero Fernando texted, in response to my article last Wednesday about how the few playgrounds we have are not very child-friendly.

Politicians, and often parents themselves, do not see how important it is to have children’s playgrounds, especially in cities. In rural areas, children at least have the space to run around in, to explore and to socialize. In urban areas, without playgrounds, children are confined to homes, munching away on junk food while watching television. When they do go out, it’s to the malls. Then when they grow up, we wonder why they’re obese and asocial, if not downright hostile to people.

We hear all kinds of excuses for not having playgrounds: no budget, no personnel, no space. Corollary to this, I hear people often complaining that Filipinos have no sense of public responsibility. Create a park and they’ll vandalize it and litter and spit and pee on it, expecting government to clean up after them.

I’d argue that our lack of a sense of public responsibility is directly linked to our lack of designated public space. I’m using the term “designated” to emphasize how we can make spaces meaningful to people, to the point where they begin to care for those spaces. And if we have enough of these meaningful public spaces, then we encourage people to care for them.

Sidewalk gardens

I actually see this happening in urban poor areas, including those with informal settlers (the current politically correct term for “squatters”). I’ve been working in Quezon City in some of these places, which are densely populated with very little open space left. To give you a concrete idea, in one lot that was less than 1,000 sq m, I found 18 households with a total population of 127, plus assorted dogs, cats, chickens, pigeons and one pig.

One day on my way to visit that community, I noticed on the sidewalk right outside their settlement that there was a whole bunch of “alugbati” (a native vegetable) growing. I asked around and found out the informal settlers had planted it, together with “malunggay” (horse radish). As I looked closely, I realized they also had two “sampalok” (tamarind) seedlings.

Don’t think of the sidewalk as a concrete walkway. It was actually a patch of soil, about half a meter wide and two meters long, already with an old tree. I’m certain it’s public property yet the community had appropriated it. There were no set rules on who would care for the patch, but the plants, which are really quite hardy in the first place, were thriving and people would come and harvest as they wished.

All over Metro Manila, I’ve found similar patches, with all kinds of stuff being grown in them. In one place in Malate area, a barangay (village) even allowed someone to begin selling seedlings from the plants he had cared for.

All this reminds me of the “allotment” system in Britain and the Netherlands, where cities have certain areas, divided into little parcels, where people can plant. It’s not surprising you have that in Western Europe, because these are highly urbanized, very densely populated countries. Yet they also have a long tradition of social democracy, which includes looking for ways to provide public space, with services, to everyone.

‘Tambayan’

Now why couldn’t we have that here as well? Each barangay could have their public space, which could then be planned in such a way that it becomes space for people of all ages. Public spaces, especially those in cities, shouldn’t be an extension of the concrete jungle outside. They should offer a safe oasis for both parents and children. In China, many playgrounds end up as a place for the elderly as well, who bring their grandchildren to play while they themselves socialize with the other elderly, under the trees. The playgrounds come to life because with so many people, you have vendors coming in, even musicians and “installation artists” like the ones who pretend to be statues. Oh the children love that.

Parents complain all the time about their adolescent children going off and disappearing. Yet if you did have public spaces, they’d use them. Never mind if they disappear from time to time behind a tree; if it’s a public space with many people, there’ll be enough social control to limit their activities. The problems arise when there is no public space and adolescents have to create it for themselves. They’ve been known to use even cemeteries for that.

Public space is “tambayan” (hangout) space, that term derived from the English “standby.” And standby need not be idle. People will assume responsibilities, looking after the children, cleaning up, maintaining a garden.

Rules would help: no work, no share in the bounties of such a multi-purpose public space. Again, I’ve seen how people volunteer for barangay work; they’d be as enthusiastic caring for public property. Urbanites would rediscover food plants, maybe even medicinal plants. Many plants, “tanglad” (lemon grass) for example, are both for eating and for medicine anyway.

Environmental groups could come in teaching recycling and garbage segregation and composting. And the children would have a playground that exposes them to nature as well, even as they learn that vegetables grow on land, not in a grocery freezer.

There’s something called the social cascade effect, where people imitate others when they see a good thing going. I suspect we’ll end up having a problem of having too many people wanting to get into the act.

I have a friend who lives in a subdivision. She owns two adjoining lots, one with her house and the other an empty piece of land. She began to plant vegetables and flowers on one empty lot and soon people were asking if they could get a cutting of one plant, seeds from another. Then she had people offering to help her water the place, in exchange for the right to harvest some of the plants.

Continue with our present system of private space, including locked playgrounds, and the young will retreat even more into their MP3 cocoons. Give them public spaces and they will develop a greater sense of communal responsibility. Who knows, maybe we’ll even end up with a nicer, kinder nation.

Missing email

To a different matter, my friends and I have started noticing disappearing email. Many email servers that deal with corporations or institutions (the University of the Philippines, for example) now have a spam filtering system so any incoming email that seems like an ad or a chain letter automatically goes into a separate folder besides the regular “Incoming Mail.” It’s a good service, but it can be annoying too in the way it can sequester important correspondence, including memos from your boss! It’s happened to me many times in the last few weeks so I’ve made it a habit now to check other folders. If you use Norton Anti-Spam, that program also creates its own folder so check that too.