POLICY GUIDE FOR URBAN PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE THROUGH

LEGISLATION
Jan Emmanuel Alaba

Abstract

This paper seeks to first investigate and elaborate the legal framework and foundations
upon which urban planning - the discipline of land use planning and allocation of spaces - is
operated in the Philippines, revealing that the authorities, empowered by the enabling laws, are
entangled and mired with political and private motives to further ulterior purposes over public
interests.

Finally, this paper seeks to advance sustainable urban development by arguing that a
Right to the City exists within the penumbra of laws, from international covenants and rights to
domestic statutes and rulings - a right of holistic participatory governance in which different
stakeholders have the right to participate in the political discourse concerning the allocation of
spaces in the city - thereby protecting and securing their political freedoms.

Introduction

Cities serve as the sites from which the arena of "development" is realized as it is in this
physical locus of the State wherein political power is consolidated, the economic backbone -
where capital, labor, and trade is produced and accessed, and the sociocultural center continues
to be fabricated. Along with the integration of the free market continuing to command the
systems of society, the urbanization of the city's spaces remains relevant, if not significant, in the
transformation of the community - and eventually of the State, as it is in these places that
discourse about how society's development is to take place.

The control and allocation of space in the city is equivalent to the allotment of resources,
which is equivalent to the designation of power in the public sphere, thereby restructuring the
relationships in the system and establishing that there exists a nexus or cycle between the
structural formation of society and the urban design. This simply reiterates that there is an
intimate relationship between how the material space of cities affects power relations between
social classes and vice versa.

Metro Manila is the economic and trade capital of the Philippines, leading all regions in
production as evidenced by its 32% share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), an econometric
measurement that identifies a country's economic health and status. Other Philippine
metropolitan cities, such as Metro Cebu and Metro Davao, serve as business hubs that promote
economic growth. As measured by GDP, modernization and development promote gradual
economic growth. The urban agglomeration and concentration of resources and production in
the city are manifestations of this.

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 The image of economic progress and wealth generation in which the towering heights of
skyscrapers in business districts, expansion of gated communities, and privatized real estate
developments serves as the façade of growth in and around the metropolis as fabricated by the
urban skyline is only maintained by urban agglomeration and development. This effectively
conceals the urban landscape, which consists of informal and public spaces that stretches along
the edges of the developed area and is typically comprised and occupied by urban slums,
disenfranchised workers peddling their goods and services via pushcarts and makeshift stalls
that informally forms as annexes of sidewalks and pedestrian stretches, often in derelict
conditions and operate devoid of sanitary regulations, which accurately depicts the condition of
the economy.

The city blueprint reveals the urban transformation in accordance with the dictum of
globalization, and studying the system and structures of urban governance and land use
planning in the Philippines exposes further the dark underbelly of privatized and exclusive
developments in cities dominated by socio-political elite landowners during the colonial period
and corporate entities seeking to diversify and expand their estates through properties more
valuable. The result of ownership and development blurred the distinction between the public
and private spheres, where the design of the space is limited wherein its usage and access is
designed to primarily generate wealth acquired through the access and use of the property and
funnel it to those who developed and also who effectually beneficially owns the property, with
general utility of the spaces also being regulated by management policies. The design of cities
and urbanization, thus, form an integral part of society, dictating not only the right of the
people but also their access to life, liberty, property, health, and the exercise of their civil,
political, economic, and sociocultural freedoms.

The city's inability to properly operationalize services justifies the assumption that the
city's spatial design revolves around commercial development and gentrification of communities
by failing to consider the sustainability of its policies in relation to other facets of its public in
exchange for development promised by corporations and the cultural elite, thereby creating a
gating factor and procedural issue in expressing effective governance. The study's completion
entails debating how the Right to the City can be operationalized in the Philippine context, as
well as concomitant legislative proposals to formally recognize such right through amendment
of city charters or by enacting a National Land Use Act, while taking into account the factors
influencing ineffective sustainable development strategizing in the Philippines. Taking into
account the perceivability of the Right to the City as a human right spanning liberty and
prosperity, the Supreme Court is also competent to interpret the law and proclaim a writ
necessary for the right to be immediately protected and promoted when threatened.

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 Research Design

The study focuses on exploring and establishing evidence and literature gathered from
international and domestic sources, demonstrating how the technical, political, and social
dimensions of land use planning are inextricably linked with its legal perspective as evidenced
by established laws, policies, and jurisprudence. The paper seeks to holistically formulate a legal
mechanism through which the Right to the City can be rightfully realized in Philippine
jurisdiction, taking into account its interdisciplinary nature, which is hoped to be adequately
addressed in this study.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Attempting to capture the concept of land in a single definition is illusory because it

encompasses many perspectives. Traditional conceptions of land begin with its legal definition,
where it is ordinarily defined and perceived in relation to property in relation to ownership
rights. The inherent nature of land to be an economic resource is a corollary to the discussion on
property, as it may be perceived traditionally as a space for consumption of goods or as a site
and factor in the generation of wealth through production, or both.

The most important aspect of land is its socio-political dimension, which recognizes that
land is the site and space that connects people and stakeholders to the market and system. It is
political for a variety of reasons. To begin, the land, as defined by law, denotes the authority's
territorial jurisdiction, delineating the exercise of sovereignty and government powers. A subject
who is outside the metes and bounds of a given authority's land is not within the realm of
jurisdiction and, as such, cannot be subjected to the government's powers. In contrast, a
government's law is valid when it operates within its territorial jurisdiction.

The political dimension of land reveals the reasoning behind land use planning in the
context of globalization and further urban modernization. Land use planning, despite being
defined in a variety of ways, is first defined as "proper management of land resources to promote
public interest," where "public interest" is an elastic concept that can be hammered to fit
modern standards where it may be subject to the wisdom and discretion of the authorities. In
terms of contextualizing the coercive role of reductioncion and space regulation,
non-compliance with the system imposed identifies the individual as a remontado or enemy of
the Crown, and they can be punished. Reduccion reveals the interdependence of spaces and how
it creates a symbiotic relationship with social order, either by enabling or causing each other to
prosper, or by providing security and exerting authority in order to impose social order, with the
ultimate goal of proselytizing the faith and exploitation of resources to fulfill the mandate of the
Church and Crown. It is also clear that not only are spaces and built forms interdependent, but
also multi-sectoral, as changes in spaces spill over and affect norms, ethics, and traditions,
which dictate social order.

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 In justifying its reasons that the Philippines is not yet politically mature enough to
govern itself and function as a democratic country, the US ratiocinated its grounds based on the
Philippines' economic despondency, which is materialized in spaces and facilities that, in the
context of the times, were unfit for sustaining lives within the frame of the American lens that is
primarily focused on the efficient and effective operations of the market to accumulate wealth.

While previous sections discussed the role of law as wielded by the State, the post-war
chapter up to the present period shifted the focus from the national government to the local
government and private sector as primary developers in the design of the city due to the tide of
globalization, which has brought up the ideas of neo-liberalism to be entrenched in legal
frameworks to pursue the various economic outcomes sought to be attained. To understand how
the spaces of cities have been shaped and carved up by the private sector as enabled by the State,
preliminary considerations on the neoliberal restructuring must first be discussed, which in turn
blurs the distinction between the public and private areas. Neoliberalism is a concept that holds
that the best way to advance general welfare is to liberate entrepreneurial freedoms and skills
within an institutionalized framework characterized by strong private property rights, free
markets, and free trade. This requires the authorities to ensure that the neoliberal order is
preserved and promoted by policies and law so that every member of society is interested in
participating and contributing to its further development. The advent of globalization, which
opened the world to borderless boundaries and free trade, fanned the flames of
neo-liberalization, which primarily advocated for the free flow of goods and services,
decentralization and devolution of powers, market deregulation, state minimalism, and
privatization of public facilities.

Discussion and Analysis

The role of property in institutionalizing social justice is recognized by the Constitution

in Sec. 1, Art. XIII that it charges Congress with enacting laws governing the acquisition,
ownership, and use of property and increments:

The Congress shall give highest priority to the enactment of measures that protect and enhance the right of
all the people to human dignity, reduce social, economic, and political inequalities, and remove cultural inequities by
equitably diffusing wealth and political power for the common good.

To this end, the State shall regulate the acquisition, ownership, use, and disposition of property and its increments.

Sectoral committees are only recognized, but not required, in the development of
Comprehensive Development Plans (CPD), which are the socioeconomic projects to be
implemented by the LGU as outlined in the CLUP. Sectoral committees comprised of citizens
from various sectors of society with technical expertise in data collection, analysis, and policy
recommendations can steer the LGU toward a holistic development of the city that incentivizes
public participation in the public sphere rather than being primarily reliant on commercial

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expansion and private development, which limits their ability to control resources within the
city and limits citizens' ability to exercise fundamental rights.

Another obvious flaw is that the CLUP is not synergized with the Comprehensive
Development Plans (CPD). Analogically, the CLUP is the spatial allocation of land and
resources, whereas the CPD is the socio-economic programs that the LGU has in store and plans
to implement. However, due to the CLUP's long-term development, LGUs frequently rely on the
CPD and inject facets of the CLUP that are frequently inconsistent. This leads to more politicized
decisions, such as when allies of the ruling administration justify the allocation and updating of
the CLUP and relevant zoning ordinances as a result of the CPD's established plans.

The author thus proposes that the Right of the City is the right to a sustainable and
inclusive urban governance that seeks to include multiple sectors of the public to genuinely
determine public interest in the formulation of land use planning and, ultimately, the
institutionalization of rights and freedoms, due to the strategic importance of the city as the
space where democracy is at its fringes due to different interests and where the exercise of rights
and freedoms is underpinned. The law mandates that the CLUP adhere to the Philippine
Development Plan (PDP), and a cursory reading of the PDP formulated by NEDA reveals that it
adheres to the Sustainable Development Goals and localized it into the Philippine context under
Aksyon 2030. The PDP initially recognizes the importance of land use rationalization, but it is
within its National Framework for Physical Planning 2001 - 2030 that reveals the essential
function of the city as a site that merges disciplines together as it fuses issues on sustainability
on food security, environmental concerns and resiliency, production and industrialization, and
so on, and that recognizes the importance of citizen participation in order to secure proper
sustainable development.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Conventional means of recognizing rights typically begin with the passage of a statute by
Congress. As such, the author contends that the Right to the City, or the right to sustainable and
inclusive urban governance, can be institutionalized through the passage of a National Land Use
Act (NaLUA) that comprehensively addresses all logistical and legal pitfalls that the CLUP fails
to address, and in which citizen participation in the process of land use planning is integrated.
The privilege to urban governance can also be traced back to Latin America, where respective
city charters or ordinances passed by their local legislative bodies provided for the inclusion of
sectoral committees to be consulted prior to the adoption of any policies or zoning ordinances.

Policy changes in urban governance - this same formulation of zoning regulations

through the Comprehensive Land Use Plan taking into account not only the geographic breadth
and extensiveness of the cities, the various sectors involved in their operation, but also the
State's comprehensive support and affordability of protection.

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 The present phenomenon denotes the turbulent phenomenon that the market's evolution
has provided, wherein it can determine a person's life, liberty, property, and freedoms. To that
end, a shift from conventional legal thought and toward a new approach is required. But,
perhaps, in order to solve contemporary issues, we only need to look back at previous legal
thinking but instead innovate on the shoulders of giants and legal luminaries.