The dream that is Quezon City

THURSDAY was President Manuel L. Quezon's birthday, a holiday in the city named after him. Beyond the celebrations, it is a good time to think of what Quezon City is today, and compare it with the original plans.
Quezon City was envisioned as a new capital, which was why so many government offices were built in the area, around what is the Quezon Memorial Circle (or Elliptical Road) today.

The names of some of the districts and streets help us piece together other parts of the dream that was Quezon City. The different "projects" (Project 1, Project 2 and so on) were actually parts of a government plan to provide affordable housing to its employees. There were even separate areas for the University of the Philippines and for teachers, thus UP Village and Teachers' Village.

Many people are unaware that Quezon City was supposed to be a green city, a garden city. You are reminded about this when you drive around the Roxas district, where streets are named after flowers like Gumamela, Champaca and Cadena de Amor.

I grew up in San Juan, but I do have memories of a greener Quezon City because I had to go there for school. It wasn't just greener but more gentle and genteel. There were no supermalls then, but Cubao was awesome enough with the Araneta Coliseum at the center.

Quezon City today

So what's it like today in Quezon City? Cubao has deteriorated through the years, turning sleazy and seedy although, in fairness, I have to say there have been efforts to upgrade the Farmers' Market and adjoining areas.

The government housing projects have mixed records. If you drive around Roxas district, you'll still get glimpses of what it used to be. One time, I had to walk around looking for an address and was pleasantly distracted by the vegetation, amazed at what was still growing from all sorts of nooks and crevices, especially around the riverbanks: the hardy bandera Espanola with all its colors, the occasional bamboo grove, emaciated but still elegant.

Elegant. A bit like some of the people living around. In one of the houses there, I once spent a pleasant afternoon with Mama Raquel, an 87-year-old former public school teacher, a true matriarch, who regaled me, in flawless English, with stories of her youth, of courtship, of teaching several generations of kids while raising seven (or was it eight?) children of her own.

Meeting Mama Raquel reminded me that there were better times for government employees, when their work was well rewarded and they did not have to worry too much about the next meal. It was not a luxurious life, but it must have been a good one, and again, it helped to be secure with a house and lot: mind you, the lots in Quezon City averaged about 100 to 150 square meters each but they were built in a way that maximized space.

Alas, families grow. The small lots were fine for a family, maybe even with seven or eight children, but when those children grew up and had their own families, that strained the resources. Now the homes are often bursting at the seams with people, and government has no resources to provide new housing.

Some of the children of these government employees did flee to America, leaving their parents behind in empty lonely nests, often poorly maintained. But whether there's a child abroad or not, many homes become dilapidated because the families are just too concerned with day-to-day survival, with no budget for repainting or repairs.

Killer highways

Having said all that, I feel these government housing districts aren't too bad. There's still some greenery, and civil community life. And there's at least some stability and security.

Which is more than I can say about the expanded areas of Quezon City, around Diliman and going toward Fairview. Here we have some of the most congested barangays in the country, teeming populations of informal settlers. That's the politically correct term now for "squatters." The barangays are actually mixed with middle- and high-income subdivisions in a state of siege, protected by perimeter gates and security guards from the urban poor colonies around them.

It doesn't help that the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority had to launch its "utak-hanip" [flea-brained] traffic schemes that have converted the Elliptical Road into the Epileptic Circle, and Commonwealth Avenue into a killer highway, with numerous vehicular accidents and deaths. Commonwealth is also becoming notorious for, literally, highway robbery, with so many passengers in buses, taxi vans, jeeps, and even tricycles being held up.

The Epileptic Circle and Commonwealth Avenue represent everything Quezon City should not be, yet the traffic scheme has been transferred as well to Katipunan Avenue, where residents are not just protesting the crazy U-turn slots but also still trying to keep their trees from being chopped down.

Katipunan residents are probably even more upset now that the government has released figures showing that the most polluted areas in Metro Manila is Quezon City, outranking even the cities of Caloocan and Valenzuela with its factories. I wasn't surprised. My friends who live in the Commonwealth area complain constantly about their children's bouts with asthma and respiratory disorders. The inability, or unwillingness, of government to control air pollution means they're killing us, softly but surely.

We tend to blame the dismal air quality on vehicles and factories but fail to see the other important link to people. The most polluted areas are also the most densely populated ones, and it is in these areas where you have the most jeeps and tricycles, spewing their deadly fumes into the air.

Hope?

Maybe there's hope, with Quezon City residents launching their own initiatives and experiments to save the city. Blue Ridge and White Plains are serious about launching garbage segregation. The UP Village subdivision has become a kind of haven for alternative lifestyles, with small business establishments, including organic food suppliers (check 97 Maginhawa Street). And there's Market One at the Lung Center, with stalls of fresh farm produce every Sunday morning. And while the Epileptic Circle may drive drivers crazy, do take time out to go into the Quezon Memorial area as well, or cross over to the Ninoy Aquino Wildlife Park.

Quezon City does have the advantage of having large green areas that, if kept green, could help the entire Metro Manila to breathe. That means keeping the trees, especially in the Balara watershed area and the areas around the University of the Philippines campus, the Quezon Memorial Circle and the Ninoy Aquino Wildlife Park.

We also need to rethink development and explore how we might want to bring back the trees to the Commonwealth area, and find ways for more efficient and less polluting mass public transport. That's not too appealing to politicians, who want the votes of private motorists and jeepney and tricycle drivers. We need to do something, too, about population, but that isn't politically palatable as well.

Sad, but unless we bite the bullet, the dream that was Quezon City will remain just that: a dream in the obscure past.