I HAVE written numerous articles on development, humanity and the challenges of urban development planning.
I am not and I do not pretend to be an expert on the subject. I am more of a builder of communities, and looking out that humans live more humane, live in harmony with the entire creation, and the chief actor for keeping such harmony and synchrony, away from the plunders and disasters of contemporary times.
For centuries, there were no major disturbances and alterations in our civilizations and environment, except for natural phenomena.
But with the rise of groups of humans, more rapacious and barbaric, and later bonded into nations, they brought a new line of march, focusing on the extraction, plunder and transformation of the resources of creation as commodities for profit and super profits, for more power and control.
From such emerged development paradigms that ironically destroy the creation, plunder resources, urban-rural division and disparity, dis-harmonization of humans and environment, reduction of land and other resources into commodities.
Mainstream civil engineering and other fields of engineering chorused in support of the prevailing paradigm. The center of civilization shifted and now revolves around sand, steel, cement and fantastic structural designs. In this so-called brave new world called, humans lost their soul, became commodified, and turned into mere bolt and nuts, decors, in this huge structure of ego.
Today, humans are no longer the center of civilization, of development, but spoiled land, structures and designs that make profit and profit that produces more structures and designs, and more profit, and so on.
Not a few of today’s breed of local government unit officials, urban development planners and developers are free from the mainstream paradigm, nor ready and willing to pursue a human-oriented development. Their framework is myopic or blinkered, at worse, politically drawn.
They package land use and development plans according to the interests of politicians, big business, developers, and foreign investors who have little regard for humanity and environment.
They put industrial zones side by side residential and agricultural zones but with poor waste management and anti-pollutant systems, thus still affecting the neighboring zones, worse contaminating agricultural production in many ways than one.
They erect buildings, malls, towers and structures anywhere they want, worsening population density and humane living, and causing the reduction of lands for public interest concerns.
They cut trees, destroy rivers and scenery, and replace them with concrete sidewalks, walls, buildings, neon lights, and synthetic decoration, which often demonstrate the cacophony and irony of the minds of traditional architects and ravenous developers.
They introduce structures, systems and designs that consume so much electricity and water, draining our water and energy resources, and often leaving human communities and vast agricultural countryside with little for production, sustainable growth and environmental protection.
As a result, what we often get are more problems and conflicts amid the sprawling infrastructures and so-called modern amenities.
On the contrary, to put humans at the center of any development and development planning means not only ensuring them of the amenities and conveniences of modern urban life but also to make them live with dignity and in harmony with the creation.
Building human communities cannot be left to politicians nor with their dynasties, much less with the engineers and development planners who often only possess mastery of sand, steel, cement, and the strengths and designs of structures. All stakeholders should get involved in various ways and levels.
We must have a basic reappreciation of our human communities, their fears, and anxieties, needs, hopes and aspirations.
We must always see the links between urban and rural, agriculture and industries, human practices and environmental conditions, even the dynamic relation of the rich and poor, and proceed from there with fair restraint towards achieving a great harmony of our human goals and activities with the condition and demands of our environment.
We build communities not on the strength and designs of materials and structures, but on the strength of the unity in spirit and goals of human beings.
To end, let me cite Johan van Lengen, a practitioner of barefoot architecture, when he repeatedly reminded his fellows that “when we build a house, we are also building a home and that a grouping of homes, each with its own harmony, will comprise a harmonious community, a productive and healthy settlement of human beings.”