Metro Manila needs parks

I AM not the first one to claim it, and I probably won't be the last: Metro Manila needs parks. The demand is clear: the little pockets of green areas one finds in BGC, Makati, around CCP or even the UP campus in Diliman get literally crowded.

However, in this country, progress seems to be measured by the height of condos and the size of shopping malls. The uncontrolled proliferation of condos and malls is damaging the landscape of big and small cities. In Tagaytay, greedy developers have built high-rise condos that have destroyed the beautiful landscape of hills and eroded the value of a precious green zone. In a known street of Malate, a 50-floor condo has been built on a street that is not even 15 meters wide, leaving just a two-meter-wide sidewalk. Forty-story condos continue to be built along Taft, EDSA and España, whose roads are already fully congested, or in even very tiny streets. It seems there is no public ordinance in the whole archipelago restraining this construction madness. It seems there is no urban planning or coordination; you purchase a piece of land and you maximize the profit as much as you can.