When most people speak of cleaning up Metro Manila, they’re usually referring to some form of political corruption. Never are they referring to the more pervasive and more immediate problem of visual pollution. It’d be easy to plug in an academic definition here, but the concept is best explained through the road we all know as EDSA.
When stranded in its legendary traffic, the wary traveler has no choice but to take in the sights. In some cases, they’re unsightly (think of the jeepneys surely painted by drunken blind men). In other cases, they’re unsanitary (think of all the branded trash, ranging from chichirya to crushed cartons of Marlboro). Still in others, they’re unsafe (think of all the driverly distraction caused by the collective busts of billboard babes). The intensity of all this visual input adds a heat to the day that no meteorologist can measure.
Visual Pollution as a Cause of Crime
The broken windows theory holds that in an anonymous, urban environment like Manila, people will look toward their surroundings for cues on how to act. If broken windows on a building go unfixed, as the parable-like experiment once showed us, people will get one signal and one signal only: Anything goes here.
Visual pollution is essentially “broken windows.” The more that it goes unchecked, the more that people feel unrestrained. In turn, crime of all kinds — vandalism, squatting, unlawful dumping, theft, public disobedience, and yes, even corruption — will escalate because the bad guys have been goaded on by the idea that no one is watching. Or if someone is watching, none of them care.
Fixing the “Broken Windows”
While it’s important to take direct action, such as voting for better congressmen and laws, it’s as important to look at the more abstract sociocultural factors that influence crime. In this vein, we must make it a national priority to address our nation’s “broken windows” right away, lest they influence more crime.
Don’t believe it’ll make a difference? Burgos Circle in Bonifacio Global City and P. Burgos in Makati City both have the security guards and police officers that are tasked to deter criminals. Yet one feels so much safer in one than the other (and hint: it’s not Makati Ave.). Sometimes the greatest show of force has nothing to do with guns. It’s simply doing the things that prove you take pride in the place you call home.
Building on the Rockwell Model
Though centrally planned around the Power Plant Mall, Rockwell Center is free from the visual pollution that tries to part people from their money. Its facades are clean. Its streets are well-lit and ordered. Nowhere will you see public transportation utilized as a personal canvas. This place inspires a feeling of peace that’s hard to put exactly into words, but that’s apparently easy to put into numbers — Rockwell commands the highest prices for condos in the metro.
As Rockwell Center illustrates, a Philippine city can be well-kept. The question becomes one of scale. Rockwell is a fifteen-hectare slice of paradise for some of the wealthiest people in this country — how appropriate is it to hold the project up as a model for the rest of the sprawling metropolis? At this point, it’d be hard to.
Can the Philippines have clean cities?
Not everyone thinks this is possible, let alone worth pursuing. They might argue that this is not Singapore — this is the Philippines. Our country is just not built for cleanliness. There’s too many people, and most of them do not even follow the basic principles of civility (Bawal dumura dito) and sanitation (Bawal umihi dito). The minute you ban gum here is the minute you spark an underground market for the item and suddenly find it stuck to places where it did not seem humanly possible to reach.
Yet we must start somewhere, if not out of civic duty than out of a basic respect for personal space. As the problems are right there in front of us, it should be easy – in theory, at least – to correct them.
Graffiti must be whitewashed with fresh coats of paint, trash must be swept up by the truckload, and jeepneys must be regulated as a means of artistic expression. As citizens and as advocates, we must speak of and believe in the value of going clean. Most of all, we must curb the advertising that has grown unchecked in the metro.
People should be able to walk without being handed a condo brochure, take a tricycle without being encouraged who to vote for, and drive without being prescribed a doctor-approved brand of milk. This is freedom in the twenty-first century.
