Philippines Makeover

quirino walkable district: opportunity sites

2006-12-18T19:42:00.000+07:00

(Cross posted on Another Hundred Years Hence.)

Next on our urban sketch project, let's look at the opportunities for redevelopment in our proposed walkable district. (You can catch up with parts 1 and 2 of this series.)

Focusing on the middle path -right down Quirino Avenue -we find more than 8.5 hectares right along the corridor that would be ripe for redevelopment. (Click on the picture for a larger image outlining the sites, check out the opportunity sites on Google Maps or download kml file (2.1kb).)

Also, just to give you context about the opportunity available, here are scale comparisons of the site vs. Glorietta and vs. Megamall (thumbnails after the jump).

The eleven opportunity sites are a combination of national and local government owned land and underutilized, privately owned lots. The redevelopment of the area then requires government incentives and public-private partnerships.

The largest chunks, thankfully, are in government control. The properties are also located at very strategic portions of the path. They include the two Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) lots, the Leveriza (Manila) Children's Park and a segment of the Manila Zoo.

The two BPI lots make up about 3.3 hectares. If zoned for an FAR* of 2.5, the lots could deliver as much 890,000 sq.ft. (82,500+ sqm.) of development to the market. The lots are ideal for transit oriented development (mixed-use, with retail on the ground floor, office spaces and three to five residential towers) - taking strategic advantage of the Quirino LRT station -and catering to Makati workers, with the CBD just 7 stops (4 on LRT-1 and 3 on the MRT) and one transfer away. The residential component (condo and apartments) could also service the housing demand from students from DLSU and the other schools nearby.

The national government (BPI is under the Department of Agriculture) would do better to relocate the Bureau to where it could better serve its agricultural clientele -or where it could be closer to other agri research centers (like Los Banos). They could also require exactions from the sale, say by requiring that a percentage of the residential units be set aside for subsidized housing for public school teachers.

Meanwhile, the Manila Zoo could raise much needed funds by leasing off part of its property along Quirino. They could give up about 100 feet deep of the zoo's layout and bring about 12,000 square meters to market. (This project might already by under contemplation by the Friends of Manila Zoo Foundation, as I found a 1997 EMB circular (pdf) listing an ECC for a Manila Zoo Redevelopment Project under a company called "Zoo Village Redevelopment Corp.") This would allow the zoo to raise funds and they can also elevate the zoo's civic presence by requiring the leasee to build a structural entrance to the zoo. (Which would be way better than just the current metal sign.) The lease can also provide structured parking for the zoo.

The zoo's location at the bend of Quirino makes it ripe for a more visible structural entrance that would serve as a terminating vista, calling strollers from the corner of Qurino and Taft to walk down to the bend and the zoo entrance. The new entrance would neatly bisect our proposed pedestrian path -and serve as a waypoint from the LRT station to the bay and the baywalk.

Manila City could also raise funds and improve the services of the children's park by leasing off the property but requiring the lessee to set off the majority of the lot for a much improved children's park. The lessee can also be required to maintain the park freeing the city of the maintenance costs.

Likewise, Ospital ng Maynila could raise operational funds by leasing off its Quirino edge and its parking lot fronting the bay. They could require the lessee to provide structured parking for the hospital.

The rest of the opportunity sites are probably privately held properties and include a large empty lot (since the Google Earth image is at least a year old, the propery may not be vacant anymore), a motel, a possible defunct water storage facility and two large underutilized properties that currently house a gas station and some nominal office spaces.

The city government could provide incentives for redevelopment of these particular properties.

Here's a rundown of the sites.

Site	est. area (m2)
1. Bureau of Plant Industry	20,000
2. Bureau of Plant Industry 2	13,000
3. Empty lot	2,800
4. Manila Children's Park	12,500
5. Manila Zoo Edge	12,000
6. Motel	4,600
7. Ospital ng Maynila Edge	2,750
8. Ospital ng Maynila Parking Lot	3,800
9. Underutilized property 1	6,500
10. Underutilized property 2	4,800
11. Water storage facility (?)	2,100

Images on the left: the area compared to Glorietta (top) and Megamall (bottom). Click for larger versions.

What's missing:

If this were a full urban planning study, we would do well if we had:

the zoning map for the area
a property list along with a cadastral or tax assesment map
current pictures of the existing buildings on the sites

Next up: Streetscape and a massing and volume study.

*Floor Area Ratio (also called Floor Space Index) = (Total covered area on all floors of all buildings on a certain plot) / (Area of the plot)

quirino walkable district: nodes and paths

2006-12-11T05:35:00.000+07:00

(This entry cross posted at Another Hundred Years Hence.)

Getting back to our urban planning sketch (part 1 here), one way to think about walkable districts is to think of nodes and paths. (This is pretty much a Kevin Lynch approach.)

Nodes are centers of activity - paths are...well, paths that connect the nodes. Nodes also tend to define the area around the node -turning the area into a "district" of sorts. Nodes can center around a single significant building or can be formed by a cluster of activities.

Paths of the other hand, have the power to define the edges of districts.

I've picked out the key nodes in our project area and the paths that connect them. It's important to think of nodes when planning walkable districts as the nodes serve as destinations and define the types of activities in the walkable district. The nodes also define the character of the paths - who uses the paths and what time of the day the path will be most used.

So our project area (which I am defining as the area loosely bound by the two transport nodes of the Quirino and the Vito Cruz LRT stations - and then the area west from the stations to the Bay), has several clusters of nodes -with different activities. (Click on the picture for a larger image or download the highres version here (png 3.3Mb) or download the kmz (164kb) file -with image overlay -here.)

The nodes and their surrounding activities include:

The north cluster with:
The Malate Church -with its public park foreground -and the park bordered by all day restaurants
Remedios Circle -which is actually a barely used public park -also surrounded by restaurants -most of whom provide active nightlife to the area (UPDATE: Citizen of the World has great pics of the new Remedios Circle, and he links to Bong Austero's musings on the redesigned park), and
the San Andres Public Market
A middle cluster defined by:
The Manila Zoo, and
The Leveriza Children's Park (formerly Paraiso ng Batang Maynila)
A south cluster with:
The Rizal Memorial Sports Center - which also serves as a concert venue apart from sports center
Harrison Plaza (a shopping center)
Several other important destinations at the very edge of the district:
The Metropolitan Museum
The Manila Yatch Club
The Cultural Center of the Philippines complex (including the FAT and the PICC)

Another major destination is, of course, the Bay itself.

Three possible pedestrian corridors (green lines) serve these clusters.

A northern path from Quirino Station to Malate Church via San Andres Road (with a branch that turns north to Remedios Circle)
A middle path from Quirino Station to the Bay right past the Zoo and the Children's Park (along Quirino Avenue)
A southern path from the Vito Cruz Station -right up Vito Cruz St. to the CCP complex.

There are two other signficant pedestrian corridors:

M. Adriatico St. between Vito Cruz and Quirino (connecting Rizal Memorial and Harrison Plaza to the Zoo and the Park)
Roxas Boulevard (does Baywalk stretch all the way to here?) at the western edge of the district

I've color-coded the nodes -green for parks, blue for cultural (including sports), and red for commercial.

There are other ways to classify the nodes that will help us think about the activity patterns. The zoo and the park are daytime activities -while CCP, FAT and the Sport Center serve daytime activities with surge activities (major concerts and sports events) in the evening and on weekends.)

Ideally we should also have the numbers on how many people go to these nodes (both during regular hours and during surge events).

The activities, the hours, the number of people will tell us what other facilities we need in the area if we are to serve a pedestrian audience.

It's also important to consider major traffic thoroughfares (in gray) bisecting the study area, which in our case (and by order of traffic volume) are:

Roxas Boulevard
Taft Avenue
M. Adriatico
F.B. Harrison

Although Quirino (east-west) does carry some load, significant traffic flows mainly along the these north-south arterials.

(Next up, Opportunity Sites.)

creating the quirino walkable district:an urban planning sketch

2006-11-30T10:51:00.000+07:00

(cross posted from Another Hundred Years Hence)

Roby's original intent with the Philippines Makeover blog was to inspire people to use Google Earth and SketchUp to reimagine our cities. I am finally indulging him (and myself) with a sketch study on creating a walkable district using Quirino LRT station as the epicenter -with Quirino Avenue as the axis and the southern Malate district as the study area. I'd like to explore how we can improve this part of the city by making it more walkable -and hopefully, more livable.

Click on the image to the right to see a larger view of the study area. You can also see the area and the markers on Google Maps. If you prefer, you can download the kmz file for viewing on Google Earth.

Why the Quirino Station? I don't know. It seemed a good a choice as any but what appealed to me was it's proximity to several urban amenities (the zoo, the bay, the sports center, remedios circle, leveriza children's park, etc.). The stretch of Quirino between Taft Avenue and Roxas Boulevard also presents some very interesting opportunity sites.

I am doing this urban planning sketch...

as a thought experiment, to see what possibilities there are
as a model/instigation to hopefully jumpstart other flights of imagination
as a showcase of physical urban planning -to show what comes into play and into consideration when you plan an area (i.e. -the physical designs, the policy approaches and the community consensus building)

A blogpost is a limited medium when it comes to illustration so I will try to create a pdf version of each post complete with maps and diagrams.

So we start with the walking shed. A normal, healthy person can comfortably cover 1/4 of a mile during a 5 minute walk and 1/2 a mile during 10 minute walk. (The number is awkward when translated into kilometers -but if you want the figures: 5 minutes = 0.402336 km or 400+ meters; 10 minutes = 804672 km or 800+ meters.) That radius has been the basis for the design of neighborhoods since Clarence Stein and Henry Wright proposed the plan for Radburn, New Jersey. (If the Radburn plan looks familiar to you, whip out your Google Earth and navigate to Philamlife Subdivision. Philam as well as most of the QC Projects were patterned after the Radburn/Garden Cities template.)

The following landmarks are within a 10 minute walk radius of the Quirino LRT Station:

The bars in malate
The Remedios Circle
The San Andres Market
Malate Church
The Manila Zoo
The Leveriza Children's Park
Ospital ng Maynila
Harrison Plaza
The Rizal Sports Complex
DLSU, Benilde, St. Scho and PCU

and just a little further off:

The MET
Bangko Sentral
The Manila Yacht Club
The Army-Navy Club
UP Manila
PGH
NBI
The Supreme Court
Robinson's Malate

So you see, the walkshed has a lot of promise.

I'd like to fill up this map with as much data as I can and gather as many landmarks as I can place within the walkshed, so if you have the time and GoogleEarth skills, churn out markers on places / landmarks (restaurants, shops, offices, etc.) within the walkshed and send us the kmz files.

Digital copies of barangay maps of this district would also be very helpful.

Next up: opportunity sites within the walkshed.

I can see clearly now

2006-10-09T13:12:00.000+07:00

As typhoon Milenyo did its bit and erased a lot of those ugly billboards along EDSA and (hopefully) finally opened our officials' eyes to the hazards and eyesores that the outdoor ads represent, Google Earth was quietly clearing the air over Metro Manila as well.
GE's evidently updated some images for the Philippines, so Makati for one -- the Central Business District, to be precise -- is now unobscured by low-lying clouds and can finally be seen in all its high-res glory.

Help Guimaras

2006-08-31T13:51:00.000+07:00

It shouldn't have to take something this tragic to have us posting again, of course, but as Filipinos not currently in town, we've been especially anxious for news and pictures to show how extensive the oil spill in Guimaras exactly is. We totally relate with this plea for help and more information posted by Cpee on the Google Earth Community billboard.
Project Sunrise, a website put up by the Guimaras government tries hard and does well to keep us up to date on the news, and is an important initiative to drum up/coordinate help for the province.
Meantime, we've taken two satellite maps (one taken on August 24, the other on August 27) offered by UNOSAT and converted those into image overlays that you can open on Google Earth. Side by side with Cpee's markers, they give you a good idea of the extent of this calamity, and how it's not just Guimaras that we should be worried about.
Greenpeace has posted many pictures (such as the one above) to show the impact this oilspill is so far having on the people of Guimaras. Meantime, the Google Earth markers and image overlays are all available in one KMZ file at Google Earth Philippines.)

Whew

2006-07-14T11:25:00.000+07:00

And Google Earth Philippines is back. Check out Baguio.

Stay tuned for Baguio

2006-07-13T22:55:00.000+07:00

Was about to post this on Google Earth Philippines, but PBWiki's down. If you've been having problems accessing the wiki for all the Google Earth markers we've compiled, PBWiki says we'll just have to wait for "a few hours".
Oh well. We'll post some KMZs on Baguio as soon as PBWiki's back online, and this one's going to be worth the wait. Thanks to Caesar Angeles, who clearly loves his hometown. He calls himself a beginner on Google Earth and KMZs. But aren't we all?
Maraming salamat ulit, Caesar.

confluences and waterfronts

2006-07-10T19:12:00.000+07:00

above conceptual map of metro manila with
suggested areas to celebrate the waterfront.

below four opportunity sites at the confluence
of the pasig and the san juan rivers

(Cross posted from Another Hundred Years Hence)

So how do we reconnect to our bay, our lake and our rivers? How do we bring them back into our shared imaginations of our cities?

To do that, we have to celebrate our rivers, our lake and our bay. We have to celebrate them as places -and with places. Physical places where we can see and approach the water. Where the waters can reclaim their rightful place in our imagination.

Fortunately for us, waterfronts offer some of the easiest areas for redevelopment -specially in old industrial cities.

Cities all over the world have rediscovered and reinvested in their waterfronts. Check out False Creek in Vancouver, or London's Canary Wharf (also this), or Singapore's Boat Quay, or the Cambridgeside Galleria in Cambridge, Massachusetts -all of these were former decrepit industrial sites that were redeveloped by public and private funds, through the creation of innovative policy tools and investment vehicles.

We've started on that road somewhat -with Marikina's Riverbanks, and Manila's Baywalk. Hopefully, the expansion of Rockwell into the old Noah's Ark Sugar factory property and the old Colgate-Palmolive factory will incorporate riverfront access. So too, I hope, Ayala's redevelopment of the Sta. Ana racetrack.

If I had my druthers, I would turn the whole stretch of the pasig from the bay to the palace into a "riverwalk" -anchored on one end by the Intramuros and Fort Santiago and by Malacanang on the other -with the Arroceros Forest Park and a re-oriented Liwasang Bonifacio as gems in between. (Why hasn't anyone redeveloped Quiapo Ilalim?)

I looked through Google Earth and identified at least 14 brownfield opportunity sites along the Pasig - notably at it's confluences with the San Juan and the Marikina -that are ripe for redevelopment. (Apart from the the manila oil depot -which really should move out of the city.)

Four are right at in Sta. Ana and Sta. Mesa -on an interesting loop of land where the San Juan meets with the Pasig (see picture to the right). There are large swaths of land in Mandaluyong and Makati, along the banks of the Pasig near EDSA, and then even more right where the Marikina meets the Pasig. There are sites just east of C-5 and more south of Eastwood City (which, incidentally made the mistake of turning its back on the river.)

I do not know how productive these properties are currently, but they would be great to redevelop into mixed-use, commercial, business and residential properties. The concerned cities should reassemble these lands - invest in the demolition and remediation (clear up any toxic messes) -then create public-private reinvestment companies to redevelop the sites. The tradeoffs (in return for the public investment) should be that the redevelop sites should set aside the waterfront for publicly accesible parks or public open spaces and that a percentage of the residential development should be affordable housing.

I've posted the 14 sites I selected on Google Earth Philippines where you can download the kml file. Or you can view the sites via Google Maps.

P.S.

"What about the pollution?" you say. "Have you smelled the Pasig?" - Well one of the things we've discovered about redeveloping waterfronts -of placing parks next to the water -is that it only increases awareness and concern for the state of the rivers and lakes. The redeveloped sites become valuable opportunities (and venues) for educating the public about water -and the role it plays in our lives. (See this project in Chengdu, China.)

The redeveloped sites could also be required to build in passive (or active) water treatment or bioremediation facilities such as living machines. (See also this example and this one.)

(If you spot other places for redevelopment, send your kml file to Google Earth Philippines.)

Five Roads I'd Like to Redesign

2006-07-08T09:58:00.000+07:00

There are at least 5 roads in Metro Manila that I'd like to re-imagine and redesign, namely:

Commonwealth Avenue (R-7)
Quezon Avenue / Espana (R-7)
Ortigas Avenue (R-5A)
Sucat Road
Alabang-Zapote Road

(Download the kml file via Google Earth Philippines. or view it on Google Maps.)

There is so much we can do to make them work and look better -make them more pedestrian and bike friendly -and they will contribute to the a more livable urban environment.

As wrote about rethinking our streets before, in Another Hundred Years Hence. (See also this and this.)

What can these streets be? I've cribbed the great images from the Livable Cities presentation of the American Institute of Architect's Center for Community by Design (Get the powerpoint presentation here 1,792 KB - and the PDF here 1,769 KB).

The pictures and text below are all from AIA. Click on the images for a larger version.

Here you have a typical strip commercial development. This image is from Hawaii but it could be Anywhere. This is clearly a car-oriented landscape with narrow sidewalks, a wide roadway and buildings set far back.

In this image, four key streetscape improvements have begun to change this to a pedestrian-oriented landscape.
The sidewalks have been widened with landscape buffers to protect pedestrians from traffic;
The buildings have been brought forward towards the sidewalk and retail has been added the first floors to create an interesting place for people to walk along;
A bike lane has been added to the road to accommodate cyclists and provide another transportation choice;
A median is included to reduce the perceived width of the road and facilitate pedestrian crossings.

On the far side of the street, they’ve added mid-rise residential buildings with more retail on the ground floor. This mix of uses promotes neighborhood activity at all hours of the day.

By adding trees and landscaping, the street becomes a pleasant, shady place to stroll. Also notice another building in the background has been added. Infill development helps to preserve urban centers.

This image shows an alternative way to create a human-scaled street. Here, the bike lane is separated from thru-traffic and brought in with a local circulation lane for shoppers. The retail is still pedestrian-oriented and the angled parking serves a buffer from traffic.

I see no reason why we can't do this. And we can argue about the effects this will have on traffic.

For more images and like those above, visit Urban Advantage.

a river runs through it

2006-07-07T20:38:00.000+07:00

(Cross posted from Another Hundred Years Hence)

Maynila was born on the banks of the Pasig -established by people who were taga-ilog ("river folk") and yet 600 years later, we are so disconnected from our bodies of water.

Notice my conceptual map - I know the Pasig connects the Bay to the Lake and I know it runs north of Makati and South of QC, San Juan and Mandaluyong - but I am, as I suppose the majority of us are, not aware of its eastward route. I have no mental image of how it meets the Laguna de Bay.

I have no mental image of the shores of the lake. I have a memory of driving around the lake -but not at the water's edge.

I know the San Juan River and Marikina River feed into the Pasig -but also have no mental image of where these rivers meet. I know the Manggahan floodway separates from the Marikina River at the Napindan Floodgates -and the floodway then runs straight towards the bay. I also know that the Tullahan feeds into the Bay and somewhere down south, the Paranaque River also feeds the Bay.

Why am I not aware of the paths of these rivers? Mainly because so few landmarks and public spaces are on the waterfront. Baywalk and the reclamation area face the bay. The Senate, the Cultural Center, the Folk Arts Theatre and the Coconut Palace are on the waterfront. So too the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park. The Malacanang is on the Pasig. The Jones, Macarthur, Quezon and the Ayala bridge over the river near Quiapo and Escolta.

Apart from that, very little of our urban life is connected to the water. So the rivers are dead -not just biologically, but also in our imaginations. The rivers do make their presences felt when they overflow their banks.

There are efforts to revive the Pasig and the return of the ferry will help -but until we reclaim the waterfront as public space, our waterbodies will live outside our conception of our metropolis.

(You can download a kmz file of the metro's major rivers on Google Earth Philippines or you can view it on Google Maps.)

See you on Sunday...

2006-07-07T14:55:00.000+07:00

...April 20, 2042. According to a KMZ we just uploaded at Google Earth Philippines, that's when a full solar eclipse will pass, best viewed from our own high-res rooftops. Kewl.
If you want more of this stuff, check out the website of Frenchman Xavier Jubier, a shadow-chaser's itinerary for the 21st century.

Mass Transit I'd Like to See

2006-07-06T11:13:00.000+07:00

Here's something I'd like to see QC take on as a city project: a series of bus rapid transit / or tram (surface light rail) lines connecting employment and commercial centers in the city.
Click on the picture for a larger image, or see it on Google Maps. You can also download the kml file from Google Earth Philippines, via this link.
I've chosen mostly wide roads on routes that are not directly served by (a single) jeep or bus route.)
I see at least 4 lines.

RED - UP to Quiapo via Quezon Ave. and Espana (potentially the most politically difficult because of exisiting jeep and bus routes -and the planned LRT line 7 -but I think QC should go ahead with it anyway)
BLUE - From North Triangle to UP via Ortigas CBD and Eastwood/Libis
YELLOW- Cubao to Eastwood/Libis Loop
GREEN - Cubao to Munoz via Congressional and Visayas Avenues.

These should preferably be on dedicated lanes and fixed tracks -but at grade. Narrower roads can be reserved for exclusive use of the bus/trolleys (except for local residents).
Pictures below show what they could look like.

(Check out my latest post at Another Hundred Years Hence to see the logic behind these connections.)

We need to bring Sergei and Larry to Boracay

2006-07-03T17:09:00.000+07:00

Karl Wozniak wrote in to point out some strange things about Google Earth's coverage of the Philippines. Karl writes: 'Please note the labeling of islands in the Romblon/Masbate area is not correct. Cuyo Island is in Palawan. Boracay is mislabeled. Romblon is not labeled properly. The whole area seems to be labeled wrong.'
And he's right. If 'borders' is turned on in Google Earth, you'll have what Anton Diaz's Philippines Google Earth Tour tags as clearly Boracay (no mistaking those waters and white sands) labeled by GE instead as 'Gunauayan Island'.
But what do I know? Swimming in Boracay and surfing on the net does not an expert make.So here's what I do--I go to where 'Boracay' is on Google Earth and the globe spins to the east, to a point just left of northern Samar.
Now, I don't presume to know where 'northern Samar' is either, so I load up that map overlay of Visayas that I downloaded from Google Earth Philippines just to be sure. Ngek. All the places in the area are tagged wrong as well. Here are two screenshots with the map overlay turned off (left) and on (right).

You'll notice Bulan on the upper left corners as a common reference point. But what the overlay tags as Aguado Islands is Boracay in Google Earth. All other islands in the area seem to be misnamed.
So OK, GE is wrong. And I imagine it's not just over these few areas we've highlighted. And I imagine that--with 7,1000 islands to scrutinize--over the next few days we'll all be flooding each other with amused/outraged emails/invitations to riot over other things that need to be rectified. But the more important point to be made here, I think, is that it would be pointless to wait for such corrections, particularly now that the technology to point each other in the right direction is already in everybody's hands.
Find something wrong with Google Earth or the KMZs that we're all sharing over Google Earth Philippines? Tell us about it. Better yet, do something about it.

Visualization=Envision=Vision=Action

2006-07-01T11:13:00.000+07:00

So thanks to Erwin Oliva of INQ7 for that gracious article on Naga City, this blog, and Google Earth Philippines. I meant what I said about GE giving us the chance to picture the Philippines 'from a distance'.
Here's the thing, I think, about our latest toy: it's not about roof surfing. What it is about is up to all of us to discover. But for starters, let's use it to share information and knowledge about each other. Would love to see some KMZs on all the countries where we're currently dispersed, for example, or markers to point out which barangays have no resident doctors at all, or something to show all of us, in one window, where we're running out of public school teachers (and corollarily, markers to show where in North America and Europe they're ending up in.) As a tool for education, we invite you to download from Google Earth Philippines the KMZ commemorating some WWII battles that took place on our shores, and let that open your minds as to the applications for GE.
If you get the picture, do help us to build the site, so everybody else can picture our nation as well. As I told Erwin Oliva, I see Google Earth as a visioning exercise. What you can picture, and now what you can render on GE, you can envision. And for all that which we can now see, maybe we can take action.

Road maps for Vis-Min

2006-06-30T12:26:00.000+07:00

We've uploaded some road map overlays for Visayas and Mindanao, both coming by way of Brimstone of Google Earth Hacks. Check out the latest downloads at Google Earth Philippines.

Open invitation and challenge

2006-06-28T17:46:00.000+07:00

'Naga City has released its 2003 basemap data into the public domain,' writes Senen Ebio, GIS-guy of the city government. Now they're inviting Google Earth enthusiasts to dissect the data, play around with it, and use it to build KML/KMZs about the city.
He also shares some Bicol-wide shapefiles (circa Y2K), which point out geographic features like roads and rivers which are not necessarily where Google Earth currently says they are. We've posted the files in Google Earth Philippines.
It's a whole lot of things to play with--on a totally deeper, certainly more expert, level than what most people have been doing on GE. But basically and precisely, it's a challenge to everyone to go beyond gazing at rooftops and finding/making practical use of Google Earth. As our earlier posts about Naga City show, this should ultimately be about understanding our communities, our society, our nation, our world.
How do we use Google Earth to fight crime? What is the best route from Fairview to Alabang during morning rush hour? What can KMZs tell us about corruption and infrastructure building in the country? What's a good 10K path for jogging with the most greenery and the least cars to run into? Which barangays still have no doctors, are running out of teachers, and where are they exactly? How big is a hacienda relative to, say, a farmer's hut on a three-hectare farm still denied him by DAR?
Google Earth tantalizes the most when exploited as a visualization tool for social phenomena and relationships. It illustrates as well as defines relationships between individuals and sectors. It shows relative space--literally and romantically--between investors and manufacturers, consumers and entrepreneurs, citizens and governments, and teachers from every sector and everybody who would care to listen.

High-res areas on Google Earth

2006-06-28T14:05:00.000+07:00

For all the excitement that's greeted the new high-res images of Metro Manila, it's also painfully obvious that the majority of the country languishes in low-res murk. The sharp view of Bacolod, for example, seems to end right there where its border with Talisay begins.
Here's a gif courtesy of Tanawing Pinoy's Eugene Alvin Villar that shows (in red) which few areas are actually already being rendered in finer detail by Google Earth. This originally came out in Eugene's tech blog here. It's not terribly accurate, he admits, but we've found it a good guide to at least show you what's already available on our favorite new toy.
Eugene, by the way, has also contributed to our wiki Tanawing Pinoy's compiled KML of destinations of note around the archipelago and beyond: the markers take you to, among other places, Dr. Jose Rizal Park--in Seattle. Check out the new stuff at Google Earth Philippines.

Naga 3D

2006-06-27T13:27:00.000+07:00

Here's a KMZ that plots and renders Naga City buildings quite extensively. This is by far the most advanced application of Google Earth by a Philippine LGU that we've seen so far.
Once again thanks to Senen Ebio, who also made the population visualization model mentioned in Urbano's earlier post. KMZs for both are now available for download at the Google Earth Philippines wiki.
Naga has really bought big time into online technology to spur local development--and into the idea that information made accessible can encourage citizens to participate in genuine community development. The city has ~~an entire department~~ one very committed individual working on Geographic Information System (GIS) material, and they've posted some of that -- plus more maps --in the city government's website here.
I know we're all excited about Google finally rendering Metro Manila in high-res, but this really brings home the point about how building a community around available technology can be more powerful than even the best technology that's still quite beyond our reach. The volunteer and collaborative spirit generates data and material much faster than any individual can even dream of new potential applications. (Hence the creation of the Google Earth Philippines wiki, which continues to grow from contributions by the day.)
So why wait for the next round of satellite photos? Already on Google Earth Philippines we have this 3D model for an entire city, and even an image overlay for Mount Mayon, which on Google Earth is as cloud-obscured as the entire Makati-CBD.

Naga Population Data

2006-06-26T20:46:00.000+07:00

The good folks over in Naga City are using GIS and Google Earth to visualize city data. The image above shows the city's population. You can download the kmz from googleearthphilippines via this link.

Our thanks to Willy B. Priles (Coordinator, Reinventing the Naga City School Board Project) for the kmz file.

Island and Context Hopping

2006-06-24T18:25:00.000+07:00

Anton Diaz of Our Awesome Planet posted 'Philippines Google Earth Tour' last year: a virtual 'helicopter tour' of 29 highly-recommended destinations all around the archipelago. We've posted his KML file in our Google Earth Philippines wiki. The compile includes markers for Pagudpud, Vigan, Banaue Rice Terraces, Hundred Islands, Subic Bay Freeport Zone, Laguna de Bay, Puraran in Catanduanes, Mount Mayon, Boracay, El Nido, Puerto Galera, Anilao, Bantayan Island, Mount Apo, and much more. Each marker also links to wikipedia for relevant and theoretically constantly updated information.

More than the markers, the context of a 'tour' demonstrates that Google Earth has practical applications. We'd like to see members of the academe challenging students, for example, to design other such tours that can educate all of us not only about the country, but even about more focused communities. What about bike tours around barangays in Batangas? Or hiking trails threading villages in the foothills of the Sierra Madre?
Meanwhile, consider what the context of 'history' adds to Google Earth. We have World War II battle markers in our wiki. Could somebody post a KML of the Bataan Death March? Or could someone please just finally show me where Pinaglabanan, Pasong Tirad, Besang Pass, Mount Buntis, and all those historically significant places are? Where would they be relative to, say, Megamall?
Anton also demonstrates the elegance of Google Earth's ability to link to the Internet--again, wikis are perfect--so people more importantly learn about the real places, people, and communities represented by those little yellow markers. The Department of Agrarian Reform is into Google Earth, too, adding yet another context to our newest toy: development. KMZs tagging agrarian reform beneficiaries as local manufacturers help to bridge farmers with investors both foreign and local.

Planes, trains, and...

2006-06-24T16:00:00.000+07:00

We now have more than 500 Philippine markers up on our Google Earth Philippines wiki. We started with MRT and LRT lines, and now we have UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a collection of World War II battles fought on our shores, KMZs for a landslide of volcanoes, and we found Herrminator, a guy in Bacolod who built up a global KMZ of more than 10,000 airports around the world. (Global nga eh.) We took the liberty of posting just the folder for Philippine airports. (Who knew we had that many?) Check out the Philippine downloadables for your Google Earth here.

Just what we needed

2006-06-23T03:41:00.000+07:00

(cross posted from Another Hundred Years Hence)
The new high-res satellite images of Metro Manila on Google Earth have made us crazy. Roby and I have decided that we need a central repository for all Google Earth data on the Philippines. We've set up a wiki called Google Earth Philippines and uploaded a few kmz files to mark up your Google Earth.
So far we've got all the MRT/LRT stations, a partial of MM landmarks, a partial of UP Diliman (someone put in the dorms please), a partial of schools, etc.
We can't do this on our own so we're inviting everyone to come and upload your own kmz files. Visit the wiki here. Leave some comments or send us a wishlist of what you want to see marked.

Google Earth KMZs and renders for the Philippines

2006-06-23T01:36:00.000+07:00

We've started up a wiki to build up a one-stop shop for Google Earth material for the Philippines (KMZ files, SketchUp renders, etc.) Check it out here. Here are a few things already available on 'Google Earth Philippines' at pbwiki:

Metro Manila Landmarks
Metro Manila KMZs
MRT/LRT KMZs
Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries
Intact Forest Landscape (IFL) borders--including IFLs for Indonesia--from Greenpeace

For more, visit www.googleearthphilippines.pbwiki.com. You can also help to build up the wiki, of course. Feel free to update the KMZs and SketchUp files.

Airport Loop

2006-06-21T10:43:00.000+07:00

Here's an idea sent in by Urbano de la Cruz. He writes:

A 5.25km express light rail or BRT linking the MRT (via the Taft avenue station), LRT1 (taft avenue and baclaran) to the Manila Domestic, NAIA terminal I and II.Most of it can be built on current LRT right of way and airport property. A later spur can be added connecting the airport to the PNR/Southrail via Villamor.

Urbano, of course, knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. Check out his blog on urban development here. He also has some incisive points about my earlier post here.

Hmmm...

2006-06-20T13:01:00.000+07:00

So I booted up Google Earth and found that Metro Manila is finally being rendered in high-res. Yehey. Was showing my daughter the roof of our house back in Quezon City, when I found myself wondering if it would be possible to map a walking/jogging/bike route from Marikina to North Triangle. Not that I do much walking/jogging/biking in MM. I'm not even based there nowadays. (Am writing this from Bangkok, which explains getting misty-eyed over yero in QC.) But like many Metro Manilans, I've always recognized that QC and Marikina have the last remaining patches of green in the metropolis, though they're as isolated and disjointed as the 7,100 islands that make up the whole country.
Consider what's at the heart of these green stepping-stones. QC Memorial Circle--OK, so it's not a circle, as Google Earth clearly shows. Oweno?--is literally an island moated by six or seven car lanes. And yet, what's right there literally on the other side of the street, just outside the circle? Parks and Wildlife and Veterans Memorial Hospital leading to North Triangle, the UP Arboretum leading to Iglesia ni Cristo, Philcoa leading to UP Diliman.
And beyond that?
Here's my brainstorm: what if we could walk/run/pedal our way from Marikina Riverbanks to North Triangle without having to mind a single car? Carlos Celdran says it ought to be possible to create such a pedestrian lane from Escolta all the way to Luneta, and after taking his tour, I absolutely believe it. Meantime, I remember running a 10K route mapped out by the UP Mountaineers and which dragged me from Diliman to Katipinan, Ateneo de Manila High School's football fields, up over a wall that got us into La Vista, down into Grand Villas, back up through the Balara Filters grounds, and back to the Diliman academic oval.
Point is, I guess these things are possible if you know how to thread the streets and warrens of a poorly cobbled metropolis.
So anyway, I was looking at Google Earth, and I realized that it should be possible to literally link Bayani Fernando's riverbanks to Henry Sy's SM City.
Not quite a Sketchup effort yet, but here's what I can dream up using GoogleEarth and Photoshop at least. Crudely executed but hopefully you get the idea. For now happily naive when it comes to land rights, money, zoning, etc., I can see a pretty wide potential greenzone by looking at Marikina-Loyola-Diliman-Quezon Circle-North Triangle as contiguous areas.
Considering that --save for Ateneo, Miriam College, La Vista, and Grand Villas--these are mostly public lands we're passing through, how feasible is this? With land-bridges (in red) as the most expensive delusions here, Metro Manilans (or at least QC and Marikina residents) can dream up a network of pedestrian paths (in white) that can have them jogging/walking/biking from Marikina to North Triangle (and Tandang Sora, Philcoa, Ateneo, Miriam, UP, Balara, Loyola Grand Villas, and La Vista along the way.)
Watchutink?