Wednesday, June 11, 2008 Editorial: Not user-friendly
IN THESE days, we have lots of items described as user-friendly. It's the enticement to this tech-heavy world, to be user-friendly, as people just don't have the time to figure out how interfaces interact to do as commanded.
But the past months' rain, floodwaters, and spiraling prices of gasoline underlined one major flaw of our city -- our city streets are not user-friendly.
When we're in Makati, we walk from Bel-Air to Landmark whether on the raised pavement along dela Rosa Street or the street-level sidewalks and underpasses of Ayala Avenue. When we're in Quezon City, we walk the whole stretch of Tomas Morato. When we're in Singapore or Hong Kong, we walk till our feet swell. But when we're in Davao, we can hardly walk to the convenience store less than a hundred meters away, and we only transfer from K1 KTV compound along Torres Street to the neighboring Harana compound with trepidation.
Not because we are too lazy when we're home, but because there's nothing to walk on for pedestrians. What you see are muddy road shoulders with a smattering of gravel guaranteed to make you skid and slide in between road shoulders filled to the brims with parked trucks, sidewalks full of vendors, uneven pavements -- if there is any pavement, and just about everything that forces every pedestrian to walk right on the road, with trucks and SUVs zipping past; virtually leaving the choice of walking to the brave, the reckless, and the clueless.
Even as gas prices hit outrageous heights, the faint-hearted in Davao City will still ride the jeepney, or worse, drive his car to the next kanto, because while the city boasts of being a fast-growing metropolis, somebody out there is forgetting that along with fast growth and metropolitan lifestyle is the healthy, cost-efficient, time-saving, and traffic-lessening lifestyle of walking.
That's the reason why major cities all over the world take pride in being "walkable", a pride our city cannot stake claim to.
Here's a call to our urban planners and government officials. We cannot let our city just grow unplanned. Something has to be done, and fast, lest we allow the anarchy we are seeing in our city streets to worsen much faster. Cities have pavements, roads have sidewalks; any urban planner worth his title knows that.
