Palafox plans on decongesting Metro Manila

The urban planner Jun Palafox, who admits that all his proposals to the Aquino administration have been ignored, has suggested that the Philippines needs 200 more cities to decongest urban centers like Metro Manila. It’s not a bad idea—and it’s something that businesses and mass-housing developers are already implementing with no help from government.

Many manufacturers and service providers in the business process outsourcing industry are already relocating the bulk of their operations to the countryside, mostly in nearby provinces like Cavite, Laguna and Batangas.

With the virtual collapse of the traffic and transport system in Metro Manila and the chronic congestion in highways leading to the metropolis, coupled with the lack of new public infrastructure development, Filipinos will have to wait for future administrations to do the job that this one spectacularly failed to do.

In the meantime, developers like Pro-Friends or the Property Company of Friends in Cavite are intent on making it unnecessary for people to travel far for work or school each day, by locating their developments outside of Metro Manila.

Pro-Friends’ huge Lancaster New City project, started in 2007 on 1,107 hectares in Kawit, Imus and General Trias in Cavite, was envisioned as a self-sustaining development project complete with housing, leisure, commercial and industrial elements. About 14,800 families have already moved to their own houses in Lancaster New City, which is still conveniently 30 minutes away from Baclaran or Mall of Asia through the Cavitex toll road. 

Lancaster will also have its own industrial enclave in the Suntech iPark, where many BPO and manufacturers could relocate in the future. Since 1999, Pro-Friends has completed 17 low and middle-income housing developments and has nine ongoing projects, including a six-tower, mid-rise condominium complex in Quezon City scheduled for turnover this year.

Source: Jojo Robles - http://thestandard.com.ph/