Can A City Be Sustainable?
Is the compact urban center model nothing more than a desperate attempt at harm reduction?
It’s 6 A.M and the sun is rising over the still waters of Manila Bay. Just offshore, a fisherman squats on a small wooden boat, pulling nets from the water. Ripples spread from a concrete pipe regurgitating untreated sewage. A scraggly line of trees separates the bay from an eight-lane superhighway clogged with traffic. I’m in a coach bus on that highway, heading to a primary school to give a presentation on sustainability. The bus has 49 seats, and I count 77 people on board.
My first day out in Manila is like a punch in the face. Sweaty people crowd the streets. Trucks, cars, and “jeepneys” — converted US Army jeeps from World War II that look like a cross between a stretch limo and something from the dystopian film Mad Max — rumble across potholed pavement, motorcycles and pedestrians weaving in between swirls of exhaust from oft-repaired diesels and two-stroke engines. I inhale, breathing in tropical air heavy with humidity, heat, and smog. I exhale, breathing out cleaner air, leaving behind pollutants lodged in my lungs.
Manila, the capital region of the Philippines, is officially made up of 16 separate municipalities, but over the years they have merged into one megalopolis of 21.3 million inhabitants. As far as megacities go, Manila is relatively small — 18th in the world, less than half the size of Tokyo. But it is the densest metropolitan area on the planet: 55,000 people per square mile, 85 per acre. At my home in rural Oregon, I live with five other people on eight acres. In Manila, those eight acres would be home to at least 680 people.
Two hundred years ago, less than 10 percent of human beings — fewer than 100 million — lived in cities. Today, the three most populous urban areas — the Pearl River Delta megacity, Tokyo, and Delhi — have a combined population of more than 110 million, and somewhere between 55 and 84 percent of all human beings (4.4 to 6.7 billion people) live in cities.
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Read the full article published today: https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/can-a-city-be-sustainable
Photos from my time in the archipelago (decolonized name for the Philippines):