Category Archives: Interest Groups

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Jolly Jeeps Transform a Food Desert Into Snack-Attack Heaven

February 7, 2013 – 9:00 am

by Purple Romero | Informal City Dialogues

For Marlene Asilo, it’s a family heirloom of sorts – a gray, aluminum food cart, one of the many “jolly jeeps” that line the busy streets of the business and financial hub that is Makati City.

“I inherited it,” says the 40-year-old Asilo as she fries banana fritters for her customers, many of them employees from the neighborhood’s banking firms, the men in well-pressed polos, the women in heels.

It was her father who got Asilo’s family into the food cart business back in 1971, when Metro Manila’s population was less than half of what it is today. Asilo remembers her dad’s first food cart was just that — a wheeled wooden cart from which he served breakfast, lunch and dinner on a street corner from dawn till dusk. Back then, most of his customers were laborers and blue-collar workers. But as the mobile units grew in popularity in the 1990s, office workers, starved for dining options in the city’s food desert of a business district, started lining up for the street food in droves. As the number of jolly jeeps exploded, they evolved from wooden carts into motorized food trucks, or jeepneys, as they’re called in the Philippines. (The name “jolly jeep” is an amalgam of jeepney and Jollibee, a popular Filipino fast-food chain).

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Palafox: Creating Green Urbanism

February 5, 2013 – 9:00 am

By Catherine Dominguez, http://www.ecoseed.org

Green urbanism, the idea of creating a community that is beneficial to both its human population and the environment, is a school of thought that’s rising in popularity in tandem with the idea that the future lies in sustainable development.

According to Dr. Timothy Beatley, in his book “Green Urbanism: Learning from the European Cities,” green urbanism is an attempt to shape more sustainable places, communities and lifestyles and consume 75 percent of the world’s resources.

Dr. Beatley, one of the first to espouse the idea of green urbanism, described a city living along the lines of green urbanism as striving to live within its ecological limits, function in ways parallel to nature, striving to achieve a circular rather than a linear metabolism, striving toward self-sufficiency, facilitating more sustainable lifestyles and emphasizing a high quality neighborhood and community life.

In the Philippines, one man envisions green urbanism not just for the country but for the world as well. He is the renowned green architect and urban planner, Felino “Jun” Palafox Jr.

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10 ideas for change in the Transport System in the Philippines

February 1, 2013 – 9:00 am

by Carmela Zabala

I would like to join efforts with Mr Michael Tan (http://opinion.inquirer.net/45869/moving-people) in his advocacy to call for transforming the transport system in the Philippines. Perhaps, the starting point is asking ourselves how we might create a human-centred design and inclusive transport system.

Last week I sent the Chairman of MMDA, Atty. Francis Tolentino, the Part 1 of our suggestions that might create a humane and inclusive transport system and incentivise people to use the public transport, cut carbon emission, and diminish the ubiquitous congestion on the road, end the senseless queuing and other inconveniences that undermine the well-being of the Filipino people.

The onslaught of climate change, increasing population and poor health should force us to look for creative solutions that regenerate our communities and produce responsible citizens. There are practical solutions that can move quickly into practice that will ease traffic which should be made mainstream activities such as walking, biking, carpooling and using the public transport system. However, the latter is highly disorganised and is already bursting at the seams. I think we need to get out of our silos and collaborate radically, perhaps a multi-agency group composed of the government and other stakeholders such as the corporate sector, civil society, and media should develop the ecosystem and sponsor change, give people a stake in the outcome so that we can shift people to buy into these activities and consequently change behaviour.

I’m passionate about my campaign for better transport because the lack of inclusive and human-centred design in public services such as transport perpetuates deeper poverty in vulnerable communities.

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Moving people

January 30, 2013 – 9:00 am

By Michael L. Tan, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Last November I wrote about how taking the LRT and MRT has become an ordeal, nothing short of a descent into hell. Many readers responded, giving their stories, their analysis of the problems, and possible solutions.

I’ve promised to take on the improvement of LRT/MRT as a personal advocacy, including a column synthesizing the solutions proposed by readers. Meanwhile, though, I thought that I should give a social history of mass transport systems in the Philippines, to better contextualize the LRT/MRT. I will also describe the irony of Manila once being relatively advanced when it came to mass transport in Southeast Asia, before lagging far behind our neighbors.

The ability to move or transport large numbers of people is always a good indicator of both technological and social development. The technology part is the more obvious but we tend to forget that efficient, affordable and safe mass transportation speaks well of a society’s concern for the collective welfare, going beyond the individual or family.

Think of our own precolonial balangay, large boats that were estimated to be able to take as many as 90 people. It is not surprising that the term has since been adopted, as the barangay, to refer to the basic political unit in the Philippines. The balangay, and larger seafaring vessels that came during the Spanish colonial period, played vital roles as people began to explore new places, engage in trade, and, sadly, go into warfare and raiding expeditions. When the Spaniards came to the Philippines, they recognized the expertise of the indios, for building ships, as well as for seafaring. Some time back I wrote about some historians’ view that San Pedro Calungsod may actually have been a seafarer, one of many in the 17th century looking for work, and landing in a ship that ended up in Guam on an evangelizing mission.

Mass transport on land came much later, catalyzed by urbanization and the large populations needing transport, as well as by the Industrial Revolution and the need to transport raw materials to and finished products from factories. In the 19th century western European countries pioneered in the development of mass transport systems: buses and trams and subways within cities, and railways to connect cities.

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Through Haute Couture and Handbags, a Manila Slum Gets a Makeover

January 26, 2013 – 9:00 am

by Purple Romero | Informal City Dialogues

Angelita Montelibano, 63, knows the story of Smokey Mountain like the back of her hand. She can tell you how many times the huge dump of garbage has caught fire since the 1980s. She knows how many times the thousands of informal settlers like her have been caught in bloody protests against authorities who have tried again and again to demolish their shanties.

And Montelibano can say with certainty that underneath the heaps of fetid trash, there is gold in Smokey Mountain, once a symbol of poverty in Tondo, Manila.

When she was young, Montelibano used to scavenge for a living, and would find jewelry in the dump that she could sell to pawnshops. Those days are long gone, however. Smokey Mountain was shut down in 1996. On its site now sits russet soil, where Montelibano and other families plant vegetables. If you look closely, you can see pieces of plastic garbage still sticking out of the ground among the rows of corn and jute leaves.

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