Plan 201 Thought Paper

Social Justice and Urban and Regional Planning

My simple understanding of social justice, before listening to the lecture made by Professor Serote, is justice for the poor Pinoy in terms of sacrificing their economic and social condition in the name of urban and regional developments like enclaved estates, golf courses, mega structures, techno parks, and other structural projects driven by commercialism and the dictates of the affluent market. From hearing Professor Serote’s lecture and realizing the complications of our society are mounting to hundreds and thousands, and the intricacies of politics, government priorities& policies and urban planning are of high-complexity, I am led to believe that social justice is a vision, maybe a far-fetched idea. It is not only historically drawn but will need a lot of social, moral, political, economic overhauling of our country’s condition.

Social justice concerned with the distribution or maldistribution of environmental consequences, on the other hand, is inequality in exposure to environmental hazards among certain sectors of the society. I am imagining a setting at Nagtahan bridge in Manila, where you can view oil depots and what seemingly looks like heavy industrial coves, existing alongside disarrayed residential houses, I supposed are highly composed of informal settlers. I am also seeing dumping sites decided to be put up in an almost remote location where possibly farming communities and fertile land coexist.

The section of Professor Serote’s presentation on the assessment of how our country measure up in terms of basic needs, inter-regional multipliers, and options for the disadvantaged, was a good talking point since this is our reference in terms of how our national & local government have incapacitated or poor majority of economic progress and healthy and livable environment through generally poor city and provincial planning, running for decades, have continued to serve the purposes of the few rich.

When you look at it, the spatial structure of the city ceases existing inequalities: the wealthy benefit from the advantages of better locations and the reverse is true of poorer people in disadvantaged areas. Does our metropolitan cities reflect "a giant manmade resource system, where in its growth involves the structuring and differentiation of space through the distribution of fixed capital investments?

Aren’t planners expected to make our lives better, not to constrict our rights to have access to fresh air, drinking water and a window view of the landscape, not grey walled-housing or even worst, mountain piles of garbage? City planners should create equal opportunities, either to the rich and poor, education, healthcare, work, and housing, which depend on social and spatial constraints. We cannot agree that planners are simply the tool of the elite, as they are seen being just dictated by those who has the power, either the rich and the government officials, and thus the will of the community is painfully recommended to undergo the strenuous political process.

Advocacy planning subjects in planning schools like SURP should introduce tools for teaching social justice that would foster a sense of social consciousness within urban planning students. A planning student should be equipped with these tools needed to promote social justice, such as environmental justice or inclusionary zoning. We are in dire need of socially-enlightened planners or “equity planners”, considering that our country has a lot of social equalizing to do.

Our planning schools should groom students to engage in educational and research projects designed to implement specific strategies for social improvement, as in field classes that provide tangible planning assistance to disadvantaged communities. This has a potential to bring theory to life and action by encouraging students to work with people they might otherwise only read about.

There is a strong role for planners to overcome injustice in the municipalities and cities of our country. Commercialism should not be the final arbiter in the building of our cities.
If we see that there in not much change on the issues of economic and social injustice, and to some respects they have gotten worse, then we should not stop in our struggle as students of planning to strive for an innate desire to create projects that are geared for the common good. Only a few architects are in the business of venturing into low-income housing because there is no money in it. We all of us have to think long term. There is an urgent need for mass housing for the poor so we should welcome innovations on the construction of low-cost dwellings for the poor that are well-ventilated and energy-efficient. What’s important now is how a generation of planners today can contribute to the development and sustainability of our country’s economically blight communities.