APL 412

PLANNING 2
FUNDAMENTAL OF ARCHITECTURE URBAN
DESIGNAND COMMUNITY ARCHITECTURE

TITLE: COMMUNITY PLANNING APPROACH AND PROCESS

ACTIVITY NO: RSW– M T 0 1

DATE GIVEN: SEPTEMBER 05, 2023

DATE DUE: SEPTEMBER 12, 2023
DATE SUBMITTED:

SUBMITTED BY:

LENCHICO, CHANTY G.
19-UR-0660/ ARCHI 4A

SUBMITTED TO:

AR. ZALDY CORPUZ

INSTRUCTOR
 A. ACTUAL PHILIPPINE COMMUINITY PLAN/ DEVELOPMENT

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AS AN APPROACH TO REDUCING RISKS

AMONG FLASHFLOOD-AFFECTED FAMILIES IN ALBAY, PHILIPPINES

How to re-build communities for the disaster survivors was a big challenge to the
government and humanitarian organizations. Using community development perspectives and
processes, a local non-governmental organization worked with the affected families in
resettling on land provided by the government. Together with the people, they mobilized
resources from private, government and other NGO humanitarian organizations.

Through self-help mechanisms, the families worked together in organizing, planning,

designing, constructing and deciding on policies pertaining to the housing program and in
establishing a new community. This is an ongoing program and recent reflection shows that
the reduction of further risks among those who have been affected by disasters could be
effectively done through a community development selfhelp approach, in collaboration with
external support organizations that could bring in resources that are beyond the community’s
capacity to produce.

Communities at Risk Experiences in the Philippines show that poor people and their
communities are usually the most vulnerable to both natural and human-induced disasters.
Even without disasters, the poor suffer the most due to inequitable access and distribution of
resources, powerlessness due to oppressive relationships and constant disappointments, or
failure of governmental and institutional mechanisms to respond to poverty. The poor include
poverty-stricken families living in sub-human conditions in the slums and informal settlers
always fearing the coming of demolition due to large infrastructure programs in the metropolis.
People displaced by involuntary resettlement continue to wonder about their security of land
tenure and their survival in the new site.

There is an increasing number of victims of armed conflicts uprooted from their

communities, and settlements ravished by flashfloods. Ordinary neighborhoods have been
deprived of the basic services needed for socio-economic and environmental survival. More
people and communities could be added to the list, and they have more or less common
attributes. A social activist provides a very apt description of this:

These are communities which have been marginalized by societal forces beyond their
control, people who have accepted their fate as that of simple recipients of national and

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international developments …communities and people who are capable only of reacting to
conditions which threaten their very survival, and very often their reactions are nothing more
than grumbling about issues but ultimately simply finding ways of individually coping with
such situations…Communities which have an almost total lack of understanding of the
structures that determine their lives…people who, through generations, have accepted
powerlessness as a permanent feature of their lives and are thus unable to even perceive reality
as problematic …who have forfeited the right to intervene in decisions and policies that
determine the quality of their lives (David,1984).

When these people are faced with natural disasters, they are the ones who have the least
capacity to survive. Among the survivors, the poor are the ones who struggle the most to be
rehabilitated.

Risk Reduction Through Community Development: A Framework for Action and

Reflection

Community Development deals with the growth and sustenance, conflict resolution,
rehabilitation and transformation of marginalized communities through people’s participation
and collective actions to ensure the holistic and corporate well-being of the people.

It means recognizing and building up the people’s innate potentials and capabilities,
enabling them to define their direction, and participate in the process of change through
collective actions to ensure the well-being or welfare of the people. Any structural change
should lead to greater fulfillment of these goals. Community Development, then, is a process
of transforming the marginalized communities so that they may collectively act on their
situations and on the external forces that undermine and perpetuate oppressive conditions
(Luna, 1999-b). In a broad and general sense, there are three ultimate goals of Community
Development namely:

1) The enhancement of people’s potentials and capabilities;

2) The active participation of the people through collective actions in the process of change
and transformation;

3) and the promotion of the people’s well being and welfare. As a corollary to this, there
are three interrelated fields of Community Development practice that correspond to the goals,
namely community education (CE), community organizing (CO) and community resource and
disaster risks management (CRDRM) (Luna, 1999-b).

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Community Organizing(CO)

CO is the core method in community development. Without it, one cannot engage in
developing communities. CO is a method which refers to the activities aimed at the grouping
of people to struggle for their common needs and aspirations in a given locality. CO processes
involve the following activities, which may overlap and be repeated at a new level during the
process of organizing: integration with the community, social investigation, problem/issue
spotting, ground work, meeting, role play, mobilization, evaluation, reflection and setting up
of the organization” (TWSC, 1990; 5-6).

B. ACTUAL INTERNATIONAL COMMUINITY PLAN/ DEVELOPMENT

The Role of a Professional Planner

Agencies that build roads, sewer and water lines, and even schools and fire stations
often consult community planners far too little. Most such agencies have staff members who
function as planners, and others use consultants who play that role. Many of those staff
members and consultants are engineers or subject matter professionals in fields such as
education and recreation; many lack a general background in planning or a real understanding
of the broader land use and other planning issues faced by the community. Although some
infrastructure and facility planners look to the comprehensive planning process as a basis for
projecting the quantity and location of future facility demand, few depend on the
comprehensive plan to tell them what to build where and when.

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 Community planners are most likely to play a role in planning for such facilities if they
ensure the involvement of the experts who work with those facilities- and the policy boards
they serve-in the comprehensive planning process. With an integrated planning process, the
resulting plan can serve the needs of those important providers of community services and the
needs of the planning commission, making it far more likely that the providers will follow the
plan.

The Role of an Individual Citizen

The role of the individual citizen in planning for future infrastructure is often small.
Although transportation and utility planners sometimes hold public hearings to discuss their
specific proposals, they are much less likely than a planning commission to seek active
involvement of individual citizens in the development of plans. Citizens are more likely to have
some opportunity for involvement in planning for schools and parks, but even those processes
are typically less than comprehensive and often controlled by experts.

Thus, individual citizens, like professional planners, ought to seek the integration of
planning for these facilities into the comprehensive planning process, which almost always
includes a significant degree of meaningful citizen participation.

Resources and Sustainability

Plans for communities in the United States often seem to assume the availability of
almost limitless resources. Most urban areas in the United States today are heavily dependent
on fossil fuels, the source of gasoline, which powers the most frequently used form of
transportation in those com- munities. There is a limit to the availability of fossil fuels, a limit
that may not be adequately reflected in the cheap price of gasoline in most of the early twenty-
first century.

An oil embargo by the Middle Eastern countries from which we receive much of our
supply could create a practical shortage of this important resource long before there is a real
one. Dramatic increases in gasoline prices in 2008- from less than $2 per gallon to more than
$4- clearly had an effect on driving patterns and may have a beneficial long-term influence on
how people think about how their lifestyle choices, such as commuting, relate to fuel
consumption. If people buy more fuel-efficient cars but continue to com- mute for long
distances, energy demand and air pollution will decrease, but the pattern will still be one that
is far from sustainable.

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 On the other hand, if more people decide that long-distance commuting by car does not
make sense and choose to live in town, telecommute, or take mass transit, there will be multiple
benefits for sustainability.

In short, the auto-dependent communities that evolved in the 1990s are largely not
sustainable because we are depleting the fossil fuel resources needed to move people around
them. But transportation is not the only area in which today's development practices lack
sustainability. Here are other examples.

Land. Mark Twain recognized more than a century ago that land is a scarce resource,
and it has become more so. Even those who argue for the primacy of humans and a corollary
right for hu- mans to use the resources they need must begin to recognize that today's
development patterns in- volve the consumption of land far beyond reason- able needs. The
United States is different from many Western nations in that it does not consider the scarcity
of land in public policy decisions about how private land ought to be used.

Buildings. Buildings are major consumers of energy, water, and materials, and they
contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Commercial and residential buildings
account for about 39 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide (a major greenhouse gas)
emissions in the United States. 14 Most development projects in the United States today
involve new buildings. In some cases, the new buildings meet new needs. In others, they
replace existing buildings, sometimes physically replacing buildings that are torn down and
some- times simply leading to the abandonment of buildings elsewhere. In other countries, it
is common to add onto and remodel buildings extensively, often over many generations and
several centuries. That represents a different set of values. With the help of green building
incentives, education, and standards in the United States, more consideration may be given to
reusing existing buildings.

How Development Occurs

Most development in this country occurs because a private developer invests money to
change the land. That developer, often with advice from professionals in marketing, planning,
engineering, and finance, will select sites that seem most likely to facilitate a successful and
profitable development. A major developer may already own property near the community and
may attempt to develop that land before buying more, regardless of the priorities of the
community. Land that seems to the community to be desirable for development may not be for
sale. Variations in the pricing of land on the market may lead developers to make different

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decisions than the community might want regarding the location of new development. And
some communities at some periods in history are simply not attractive to any developers for
any- thing; such communities can make all the plans in the world, but if no one decides to
invest in new development there, the community will remain just as it is or possibly deteriorate.
Figure 10.1 shows the initial stages of a new development project undertaken by a private
developer.

For nearly half a century, a certain west Texas community was shaped like a pie with a
piece cut out of it, equal to about one quarter of the pie. The community had logical plans for
filling in that quarter of the pie, but new development actually created a long tail off one side
of the pie (in the di- rection of the sewage treatment plant). The missing quarter was owned by
one family that was perfectly happy continuing to operate its ranch, adjoined on two sides by
city, and the family simply had no intention of selling the property. Many re- development
projects have been thwarted because a particular landowner would not sell a key parcel, even
at a fair price. Efforts by local governments to use the power of eminent domain, through which
government forcibly acquires and pays for property, led to a significant backlash after an
important 2005 Supreme Court decision. The effect of new state laws and new political policies
adopted in uses; thus, at the bottom of the pyramid would typically be what amounted to the
local industrial district, often called a "general" district, allowing most if not all possible land
uses.

Many communities subsequently removed residential uses from commercial districts.

This type of regulation had the effect of prohibiting the very common pattern of residential
uses above small commercial buildings, a pattern that characterized healthy downtowns
throughout the Midwest and elsewhere when zoning was adopted. Subsequently, more and
more communities removed residential uses from industrial districts because modern plant
managers do not want nearby residential neighbors any more than residents of nice
neighborhoods want nearby industry. Nearby residents represent the potential for complaints
about noise and odors and, more seriously, the risk of in- jury and subsequent litigation in case
of an accidental fire, chemical spill, or other event at the facility.

Many communities retain the cumulative nature of zoning in residential districts,

allowing single-family homes in every residential district, al- lowing duplexes in all but the
most restrictive residential district, and so on. Some also have office districts that permit some
residential uses, creating an opportunity for transitional uses along major roadways. Today

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many communities are once again allowing the mixture of residential and commercial uses in
downtowns and some other commercial areas.

C. IDENTIFY YOUR COMMUNITY AND OPINE ON THE APPROPRIATENESS

OF COMMUNITY PLANNING APPROACH AND PROCESS TO YOUR OWN
COMMUNITY.

All communities are dynamic in nature. They act, interact, evolve and change as a result of
larger political and economic forces as well as internal and external forces, but now all
communities are designed to really help the community and the people living in it.

I think one of the appropriateness of community planning approach is having the

resources and being “sustainable”. Through the help of community planning, it can help
solve the unavailability of the resources needed in that certain community. For example, inside
a school or a university- Through the emerging number of enrollees, classrooms have run out,
resulting to having to switch the face-to-face class to online class. Such things affect the
students and the students’ performance academically. Though, the help of community
planning, such professionals can study this and make a way to provide the needed facilities,
and not just that- they can also improve the community development designs through the new
innovations like “sustainability”.

A sustainable community takes into account, and addresses, multiple human needs, not
just one at the exclusion of all others. It is a place where people of diverse backgrounds and
perspectives feel welcome and safe, where every group has a seat at the decision-making table,
and where prosperity is shared.

Another reason why Community Planning is a big of a help is that it can bring awareness
to the potential hazards within an area. This awareness is beneficial in communities where citizens
may not have resources to become educated on their area’s hazards. This education can be as simple as
identifying the busiest streets in the neighborhood (for child safety) but can range to something as
complex as identifying train tracks where rail cars filled with chemicals may pass adjacent.

We have firsthand experience with this from planning for disasters in various municipalities.
There have been instances where local stakeholders were not aware of the risk of landslides. They might
have anticipated hurricane-related wind hazards, but they might have overlooked the inherent risk
brought on by the location.

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 You can better prepare for potential hazards by being aware of what they are in your area. The
higher your level of preparedness is, the better your chances of surviving a disaster are. Overall, the
process of community planning serves as a great tool to ensure there is a plan for any significant event
in the community. This blog’s focus has been more on using the process for disaster planning, but you
may use this in various methods. Community planning can help communities prepare for a range of
events, interventions, and celebrations.

Through this though, as what the studies have cited above, that “Communities at Risk
Experiences in the Philippines show that poor people and their communities are usually the most
vulnerable to both natural and human-induced disasters. Even without disasters, the poor suffer the most
due to inequitable access and distribution of resources, powerlessness due to oppressive relationships
and constant disappointments, or failure of governmental and institutional mechanisms to respond to
poverty”, thorough planning can be a great help to not let these people be left behind though the times
of disaster.

Above all these, the combination of material and human development, in my opinion, is what
constitutes true community development. Real development, in my opinion, necessitates enhancing a
community's capacity to take charge of its own development by developing in the community analytical
and planning skills as well as practical knowledge, to enable community members to repeat
development projects and planning procedures in the future. A successful planning project should leave
a community with an improved capacity to meet future needs.

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 REFERENCES:

• Emmanuel M. Luna, Community Development as an Approach to Reducing Risks Aon

Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, Disaster Studies Working Paper 24, February 2009
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/hazard-centre/sites/hazard-centre/files/wp24.pdf
• Community planning. (n.d.). Google Books.
https://books.google.com.ph/books?hl=en&lr=&id=4NeAqLKiN5IC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=i
mportance+of+community+planning+in+the+municipality&ots=dsI2ObleSu&sig=3_kG7Uu
ZHWOPBHqSs3ShnADDT7s&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=importance%20of%20communit
y%20planning%20in%20the%20municipality&f=false

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