City Officials Argue That If You Cannot See The Problem Behind The Bougainvillea The Problem Is Solved
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Manila LGU Introduces Barangay Beautification Program Consisting Entirely Of Plants In Front Of Eyesores
MANILA — The City of Manila launched its 2024 Barangay Beautification Initiative Tuesday, a citywide program under which bougainvillea, ficus, and various ornamental plants will be planted in front of approximately 340 locations that have been identified as “visual quality concerns,” which is the program’s term for what residents of those barangays have been calling, for varying numbers of years, broken walls, illegal dumpsites, abandoned structures, open drainage channels, and deteriorating infrastructure.
City Administrator Ramona Castillo-Evangelista presented the initiative at a City Hall press conference, flanked by potted bougainvillea that would, she confirmed, be among the first plants deployed. The initiative has a budget of 18 million pesos, of which 14 million is allocated to plant procurement and installation, 2 million to maintenance for the first six months, and 2 million to what the program calls “visual impact assessment” to measure the improvement in citywide aesthetics.
“A beautiful city is a better city,” City Administrator Castillo-Evangelista said. “When we improve the visual environment of our barangays, we improve the quality of life of our residents. The plants we are installing will transform problem areas into community assets.”
A journalist asked whether the plants would address the underlying conditions that made the locations visual concerns, including the illegal dumping, the open drainage, and the structural deterioration. City Administrator Castillo-Evangelista said these were “separate concerns addressed through separate programs” and that the beautification initiative was “specifically focused on visual improvement.”
The Specific Locations
A review of the 340 identified locations, obtained from the City Administrator’s office, reveals a specific pattern: the locations are concentrated in areas visible from major roads, particularly roads used by city officials for their daily commutes and by media for coverage of city government activities. Locations in interior barangay streets, which are not visible from major roads, are substantially underrepresented in the program’s 340 sites despite being, by residents’ accounts, often in worse condition than the roadside locations receiving plants.
The city has not formally confirmed this geographic selection methodology. City Administrator Castillo-Evangelista, when asked about the pattern, said the sites had been selected “based on a comprehensive visual audit conducted by city staff” and that the audit “had covered all barangays equally.” She did not provide the audit methodology.
One of the 340 selected sites is an open drainage channel on Taft Avenue that has been the subject of resident complaints since 2018. The drainage channel will receive twenty bougainvillea plants, which will be placed in a row in front of the channel. The drainage channel, which is the source of the complaints, will remain open and continue operating as it currently operates. The plants will, depending on growth rate, obscure it from street view within approximately six to eight weeks.
This kind of intervention that addresses the visual presentation of a problem without addressing its underlying cause is consistent with a long tradition in urban governance of distinguishing between problems and their appearances, and of choosing to address the appearances.
Resident Reactions
Residents living near the 340 selected sites were contacted by reporters Wednesday. Their reactions varied by proximity to the underlying problem. Residents who live adjacent to the open drainage channel on Taft Avenue expressed skepticism about the plant solution. One resident, who has complained about the channel’s smell and mosquito production since 2020, said she “welcomed the bougainvillea in principle” but noted that bougainvillea did not “address the smell” and that mosquitoes “could fly over plants.”
A resident near a selected site that is an abandoned lot with periodic illegal dumping said the plants were “a nice idea” but that “the plants will not stop people from dumping.” She said she expected the dumping to continue behind the plants, which would then, over time, also become an eyesore, at which point she assumed additional plants would be installed in front of the plants.
This chain of visual remediation, in which plants cover problems that then grow new visible problems requiring additional plants, is a theoretical possibility that the city’s beautification plan does not address. The maintenance budget covers plants, not the underlying problems, for six months.
The Visual Impact Assessment
The 2-million-peso visual impact assessment, which will measure the program’s effectiveness, uses a before-and-after photographic methodology in which standardized photographs of each of the 340 sites will be taken before plant installation and six months after. An assessment panel will rate the visual quality of each location on a ten-point scale. Improvement in the aggregate score will constitute success.
The assessment methodology measures the appearance of the locations from the standardized photographic angle, which is the street-facing view. The assessment does not include photographs from the residential perspective, which would show the back side of the plants and, in many cases, the unchanged condition behind them.
This is consistent with a wider pattern in program evaluation in which the assessment methodology is designed to measure the program’s stated goal rather than its actual effect on the underlying problem.
The Broader Program
The beautification initiative is one of seven programs in the city’s 2024 Urban Quality Improvement Package. The other six programs include: street lighting improvements, pavement marking refreshes, signage standardization, waste bin installation, pedestrian lane repainting, and a “greening initiative” that is a separate program from the beautification initiative despite also involving plants. City officials have assured residents that the seven programs are “complementary and mutually reinforcing.”
For more on Philippine urban improvement programming, see The Daily Mash for related British urban beautification coverage.
The bougainvillea installation begins next week. The drainage channel schedule remains as configured.