Public spaces, public health

I FINALLY got to watch a video of "Gangs of New York" the other day and remembered some of the articles that appeared in Philippine newspapers trying to console Filipinos by pointing out that New York, in the 1860s had terrible problems like we have today: gang wars, dirty elections, and abject poverty.

I agree with that analysis, but I don't think we can just sit back and hope that in a hundred years or so, we'll become as "civilized" as New York City or the United States. No, heavens, no, societies don't develop along a single model and, in fact, I'd argue that many of the Philippines' most serious problems hound us precisely because we insist on aping the Americans.

There is, however, one aspect of New York which I wish we'd imitate, and this is the way it was able to create a mega-city while retaining a consciousness about the environment through shared public spaces. Moreover, they did this even amid the chaos and squalor that we saw in "Gangs of New York."

I'm talking here about New York's famous Central Park, which marks its 150th anniversary this year. Yes, against the violence and misery depicted in "Gangs of New York," the city actually built an oasis for city dwellers. It's a model our cities should be looking at so here's a bit of the park's history.

I'll start out by referring you back to the movie, which captures the congestion of the city. In 1850, New York City had a population of half a million. I know that's about the population of a single district in Metro Manila, but remember this was the 19th century, with almost none of the basic services we have today.

Many of the residents were migrants, escaping poverty and political turbulence in Europe. But life in New York was often even more unstable and miserable than it was back in Europe. To escape urban blight, people flocked to the city's Greenwood Cemetery, which offered some semblance of rural landscapes and tranquility.

As early as 1844, William Cullen Bryant, the editor of the Evening Post, called for the creation of a public park. Bryant saw that a park could provide a healthy refuge for urban residents. It took another 10 years before the city government began to act. Between 1853 and 1856, the city spent five million dollars to buy up undeveloped land, and in 1857, it launched a public competition for a park plan.

The winning entry was the "Greensward Plan," produced by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Construction began in 1858 and was to continue for some 20 years. Out of rocky and muddy swamps, and depending mainly on manual labor and horse-drawn carts, the swamps were converted into Central Park. Some four million trees, shrubs and other greenery were planted, representing 1,400 species. Four artificial lakes were created in a landscape that tried to imitate rolling meadows.

The park has had its ups and downs and has often been the subject of political squabbling. But each decline has been followed by a renaissance. In 1934, following years of deterioration, the park was renovated to introduce recreational facilities, including 19 playgrounds and 12 ball fields. In the 1960s and 1970s, the park again deteriorated, becoming notorious for muggings. In 1980, a private non-profit organization, the Central Park Conservancy, was created to raise funds for the park's rehabilitation and maintenance. Today, the 843-acre (about 350 hectares) park has come alive again, and gets as many as 250,000 visitors in a weekend.

There are, of course, many other cities throughout the world that have given emphasis to the creation of public spaces. This is especially important in densely populated cities. China has very limited living space in cities but this is offset by large public buildings, from playgrounds to sports stadiums and libraries. Britain and the Netherlands have their parks and botanical gardens but go a step further: some cities allow residents to claim temporary rights to small plots of public land to tend small gardens. I love Brazilian cities' public dance halls, where people of all ages, sizes, and genders can samba away the night. All these public spaces make a great difference for people's health, both physically and mentally.

In his book "Dead Season," American Alan Berlow notes how the Philippines gives such low priority to creating public facilities. I couldn't agree more. The very rich, with the luxury of having their own mini-parks and fitness centers within their own lavish homes, wouldn't care less about what the unwashed masses have. Drive through our rural areas and the two biggest buildings will be the Catholic church and the cockpit. Sure there's always a plaza in the poblacion, but with a weary-looking statue of Rizal in the center, weeds growing all around.

The city of Manila bears watching, with Mayor Lito Atienza's efforts to revive the city producing mixed results. The Metropolitan Theater continues to languish and the adjoining Arroceros Park continues to be the subject of dispute, but the Manila Bay restoration and the building of children's playgrounds in several parts of the city are commendable.

Perhaps the next step is to get private citizens more involved through something like the Central Park Conservancy. The other week, I was out on the boulevard taking in the Manila Bay sunset when I noticed that on the next table a child kept throwing pieces of paper into the bay. Her parents watched, and did nothing. I wasn't surprised. With malls dominating our concept of public space, we don't demand the creation of real public spaces for our minds and bodies. And when we do get them, like the Manila Bay area, we have nothing of the community spirit to maintain these spaces.

Maybe, with time, we will appreciate how public spaces promote public health and demand more playgrounds, parks, sports stadiums, cultural centers (note with a small "c") and libraries as our right, while learning to be responsible for nurturing those spaces so that they grow into our national psyche.

Comments to miguel@pinoykasi.net