Starter Communities: Architecture and Rural-Urbanism in Cavite Province

Participants Stratton Coffman Marlena Fauer Mengqi He Mengfu Kuo Rachel Li-Jiang Luo Nof Nathansohn Zhifei Xu Nitzan Zilberman Research Team Marlena Fauer Melissa Gutierrez Soto

STARTER COMMUNITIES

2019 MIT Workshop Instructors Prof. Rafi Segal Kelly Leilani Main Helena Rong (Teaching Assistant)

STARTER COMMUNITIES

ARCHITECTURE AND RURAL-URBANISM IN CAVITE PROVINCE Prof. Rafi Segal Kelly Leilani Main MIT School of Architecture and Planning

STARTER COMMUNITIES

ARCHITECTURE AND RURAL-URBANISM IN CAVITE PROVINCE Prof. Rafi Segal Kelly Leilani Main MIT School of Architecture and Planning

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CONTEXT URBANIZATION IN METRO MANILA PHILIPPINE TRANSMARINE CARRIERS SILANG SITE COMMUNITY STARTING COMMUNITIES

MIT DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 2019 WORKSHOP Instructors Prof. Rafi Segal Kelly Leilani Main Teaching Assistant Helena Rong Research Team

COMMUNITY CONCEPTS PROJECTS Garden Block

Participants

Loop de Loop

Stratton Coffman Marlena Fauer Mengqi He Mengfu Kuo Rachel Li-Jiang Luo Nof Nathansohn Zhifei Xu Nitzan Zilberman

Vocational Campus Edge Plazas

Marlena Fauer Melissa Gutierrez Soto

SPECIAL THANKS PTC Team Dito Borromeo Victor Gelano Reyann Robrigado Ramon Sumulong Maricar Rose Guerzon

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ACM Homes Jose B. Amantoy Jr.

Government of Cavite Hon. Governor Jesus Crispin Remulla Planning Department of Cavite

Manila Observatory Dr. Antonia Loyzaga Dr. May Celine Thelma Vicente Dr. Faye Cruz Dr. Julie Mae Dado Dr. Ma. Laurice Jamero Dr. Gemma Teresa Narisma

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STUDIO TRIP

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PROVINCE

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RESILIENCE ACROSS SCALES

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ENVIRONMENT

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INFRASTRUCTURE

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SOCIETY

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ECONOMY

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SETTLEMENTS

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PROPOSAL

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CONCEPT

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URBAN BANDS

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ECO CORRIDORS

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END NOTES

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INTRODUCTION

STARTER COMMUNITIES

ARCHITECTURE FOR A RESILIENT RURAL-URBANISM

Rapid urbanization is eroding the historic boundary between the center-city and its peripheries and limiting the ability of cityregions to adapt to increasing environmental impacts of climate change. As people settle continuously around the borders, new housing, industrial, and commercial space creates a continuous condition of low-rise horizontal development with multi-centered amenities and scattered pockets of open space. This ‘between city’, a new type of urbanity that breaks from the traditional center–periphery model, creates a multi-nodal urban landscape shaped by an ‘a la carte’ menu of recreational, commercial, and economic activities and relatively high dependency on individual mobility.1 While positive in some social and economic aspects, this dispersed urbanism often degrades the environment via a general erosion of local reliance on and connection to the land more common in rural livelihoods. Dispersal, especially when not properly planned can also increase social fragmentation and isolation as daily interactions amongst residents are limited through land use segregation and private automobile use. However, whether we like it or not, this urban condition is becoming a dominant type of living environment around the world and will only increase as the global middle class continues to rise. Dispersal is easy to critique, but the questions remain

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whether we truly understand not just the challenges but also the opportunities that this form of urbanity can offer. Rather than fight against this process, Starter Communities asks whether it is possible to design dispersal into something that builds belonging between people and restores our relationship with the landscapes we inhabit.

It asks whether a new rural-urban paradigm can make development more sustainable and help communities increase their resilience to the risks of climate change.

In Cities of Dispersal (2008), authors Segal and Verbakel argue that it is possible to intensify social, cultural, and economic interactions, historically associated with the traditional compact city in a geographically and formally dispersed environment. This proposition requires careful reexamination of how we design and shape public and civic spaces and how we understand the meaning of collective life. One way of approaching this challenge is by rethinking collectivity across multiple scales. Scale, more than an order of size, refers here to the need of design to work across multiple sites and projects to better shape the relationships between them. In this context scale is also understood as a political tool that distinguishes and orders geographies through the creation of hierarchies which are not necessarily vertically relational

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in terms of size.2 Between the scale of the individual household unit and the city-region lay several intertwined and independent features: city, neighborhood, industrial park, open space, housing estates, single homes, agricultural plots, etc. Each of these units refers to a physical delineation of space as well as actors with distinct types of agency. For example, regional agencies may undertake large-scale planning efforts which incorporate ecological systems such as watersheds to plan for resource management and essential connectivity networks like roads. Municipalities can use zoning and land use policies and building codes to create comprehensive plans that impact other scales that are beyond their own. At the household level, architects design individual homes with their own closed feedback loop and elements. But housing, the most dominant feature of the built environment, is not merely a solution for shelter and security. It is also an expression of individual ownership and identity, and more so roots a person in place. Neighborhoods develop their unique character as more than just the aggregate of multiple houses, as distinctive designs and arrangements of units facilitate diverse types of encounter. Residential towers, informal areas, and suburban developments all have distinct features which define how people live and how they interact with one another.

Shouldn’t a neighborhood be defined by the quality of the community it creates in addition to the quality of individual homes it includes? A sense of belonging and community forms organically over time and is much more difficult to achieve when housing settlements are constructed all at once as part of rapid urbanization processes.

We believe neighborhoods with a strong

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sense of community can not only improve the daily life of their inhabitants but also make residents better prepared to face environmental hazards exacerbated by climate change. Working systemically across social and environmental scales can help build relationships and sustainable practices from a single household, to a neighborhood, to a town and to an entire region. Community scales often overlap horizontally with one other, establishing relationships amongst various groups through extended networks rather than relying on the institutional hierarchies which govern geographical boundaries. As Katherine Giuffre describes in Communities and Networks, it is useful to think of an individual as an aggregate of multiple communities, rather than approaching the concept of community as a closed circle made up of individuals within it. This has become increasingly true as the conditions of our current social and economic structures have transcended the context of place alone.

Global communication networks and the vast movement of information and people have deconstructed the walls of our lived experience and the relationship between who we are, what we do, and where we are.

It is not uncommon that a person may find more compatibility with others hundreds of miles away through access to the Internet or travel than they find with their neighbors.

Internet access via cellular technology means that even rural areas have seamless access to their social network, just as in cities.

Young people increasingly study or live abroad away from their families in search of opportunity. Today, even neighbors are not even necessarily bound by the same social and economic status or concerns. This

change has raised many questions about how we decide where and how to live, as we are no longer relegated to our immediate environment to form and maintain a singular notion of community. The question we ask is, what role does design have in these new landscapes of connectivity, and how can architecture and urbanism help shape new types of communities?

In his book Community Formation, Audley G. Reid argues that communities are created in an opportunistic moment of change. Within this moment, different socio-contributions (religious, economic, political), merge to facilitate the creation of a unique socio-cultural identity. In the United States, the “Starter Home” can be considered a moment of such fundamental change - one that represents the accumulation of material wealth and assets and the arrival into the middle class. In the United States as in other countries starter homes were built en masse in suburban estates and connected to urban areas with vast transportation networks.

The suburban project emphasized nuclear family life and individualization through the design of the single family home and the urban layout in its totality. While this housing model is now considered to have some negative environmental and social consequences, it undoubtedly ushered in a new era of living and designed a lifestyle of its own, and this fact is key to the project outlined here. Like a ‘starter home’ for first time home buyers, Starter Communities explores the condition whereby communities are formed from scratch – without the foundational spaces, protocols, activities, and traditions of established communities. Yet unlike ‘starter homes’, Starter Communities

focuses on the qualities of collective living without restricting the independence of the individual home owner. One does not come in place of the other. Starter Communities believes that neighborhoods can be designed to enhance feelings of belonging and to support programs and spaces of collective life without sacrificing privacy and the desire for individual expression.

We believe design can work to prioritize shared common spaces and shared elements: collective ‘magnets’ around which individual families can construct collective identity and social ties. We imagine first a way of living amongst multiple people (see: ‘community concepts’) as the basis for design rather than square footage or price point of the single home. Community design that is grounded the local environmental context can also improve the quality of life of its current and future residents without sacrificing ecological functionality. Architecture can thus help to define the role that community plays in both human development and environmental management.

However, every dispersed urban context is unique, and any design response must adapt accordingly. Each site requires careful consideration of what types of communities are desirable, which housing typologies are appropriate, and what the local environmental challenges are. The project presented in this book is in Cavite Province, just south of Manila, Philippines. Colonized first by the Spanish and then by American forces after World War II, the Philippines was heavily influenced by the American cultural project of home ownership and suburbanization. Urbanization driven by industrial investment led to a dramatic

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growth of the capitol city-region of Manila over the last fifty years, which is now home to over twenty million people and could reach as much as forty million by 2050.

In addition to housing demand supplied by the private real estate development market, the Philippines government and its numerous Local Government Units (LGUs) have made home ownership, not just housing, part of local policy objectives.

Government incentives, coupled with rapid in-migration of young people from rural provinces in search of jobs and education, has led to the development of massive residential estates throughout Metro Manila and beyond, where thousands of new units are constructed every year. Cavite Province approved 5,675 construction permits in the last quarter of 2018 (October – December) alone. Eighty percent of these permits were for residential construction.3 While suburban housing development often implies ‘bedroom communities’ of commuters, this isn’t always the case in Cavite. Some properties are second homes for urbanites who escape the busy city to enjoy the peace and quiet of the ‘countryside’. Some work in agricultural or industrial parks scattered throughout the urban perimeter. Other households are supported by Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), where the primary breadwinner spends months overseas and sends money home in the form of remittances. The wide variety of social and economic encounters in this landscape create metro Manila’s own version of dispersed urbanism.

To provide affordable options, many housing estates forgo amenities and public space. The lack of gathering places reduces

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residents’ abilities to partake in collective activities, an unnecessary separation that can lead to isolation and weaker social ties amongst residents. Site plans are currently designed as mono-functional dormitory compounds of repetitive house models laid out to maximize efficiency within the site boundary. And while interaction on the street is possible, such encounters are decreased through use of private automobiles and the need to drive to reach destinations for work, school, or play. The lack of design specificity also makes it difficult to nourish a local identity and sense of belonging. While some of this can be achieved through single home interventions such as painting and landscaping, strategies can also be approached through design at the neighborhood scale. Likewise, while each housing estate may also have its own character, each is gated off from its neighbors, with little public space to connect the residential landscape across the province as a whole. We believe there is a way to make each design feature legible across multiple scales, to understand how a single home can more effectively accesses the region’s opportunities, while ensuring that a unique regional identity builds a sense of belonging for each household.

In addition to social fragmentation, the rapid conversion of Cavite province from small-scale agricultural production to industrialization and residential development has degraded the environment.

The lack of control on development patterns is weakening the ability of the province to stand resilient in face of environmental risks compounded by climate change. Limited administrative

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capacity and funding to implement land use planning strategies at the local level has led to deficits in transportation, waste, and water management infrastructure. Lack of coordination across cities, municipalities and the provincial level has resulted in highly degraded watersheds full of industrial and household runoff which pose a threat to wildlife and humans alike. Poor water regulation within estates leads to localized inland flooding, which will only increase the burden on insufficient sewage infrastructure as precipitation events increase. Loss of fertile agricultural land to residential use is reducing localized food production and contributing to food insecurity as residents are required to import goods. Without a guiding vision, this haphazard development increases exposure to natural hazards and threatens Cavite’s future ability to grow and sustain itself, ecologically, economically and socially, as a desirable place to live.

These two challenges described above define the motivation for the project presented in this book, and led us to focus on both a proposal for the province as a whole through a set of guiding principles for regional development, and to explore urbanarchitectural concepts on the neighborhood scale of a community through concrete design ideas for shared programs and spaces.

Starter Communities focuses first and foremost on the possibilities that these new housing developments present rather than solely critiquing this mode of development, approaching questions of rural-urban resilience in Cavite Province primarily through the scale of the community. It seeks to understand how design can aid in the formation of community in dispersed urban

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environments and how different community concepts can impact resilience across the province as a whole. At the same time, we understand the necessity to assure that ideas are maintained uniformly across scales, a thinking that reflects the project’s aspiration for urban development in greater harmony with the environment.

In order for Cavite to become more resilient, independent, sustainable, economically and socially strong, it must present a vision of development that does not solely rely on the urban center of Manila, but rather creates opportunities for a different kind of urbanism. While Cavite province is traditionally agricultural, current planning has allocated industry and residential in the ‘rings’ closer to Manila, preserving agricultural areas farther from the center.

From a regional planning perspective this approach de-facto strengthens the reliance on Manila as the urban center for the province - a convention we aimed to challenge. This organization does not necessarily follow the places where agriculture is best suited nor responds to the areas of risk for denser build-up areas, specifically residential uses which are most venerable to flooding. This binary centerperiphery, industrial-agriculture divide does not need to be relegated to opposite poles of the province, but can be combined in a way that better responds to the both the existing built environment and the natural features of the province’s geographic qualities: topography, soil types, water shed structure, areas of environmental risks, and more. A key component of creative and resilient development strives to optimize both built and natural environments: to

allow the forces of nature to take their course with minimum disruption to the built areas while at the same time strengthening the sense of identity among communities living in the province. Cavite can find a way to incorporate agricultural development into an urbanization strategy which fosters economic growth, industrial activity, and rural livelihoods in concert.

In Cavite Province, we can imagine (within its dispersed urban condition) a new type of rural-urbanism to emerge - a meeting of urban development and its rural lands, a vision that creates a more balanced relationship with the province’s unique environmental character, cultural history and potential advantages to offer a different paradigm of living.

This alternative way of living can also benefit from what metro Manila lacks.

Manila is infamous for its lack of green spaces – the abundance of natural resources in Cavite is something to be cherished and should not be relegated to tourist zones alone. The natural topography provides an opportunity to rethink the connections between Manila and its environs not in a sequence of rings, but of strings or wide bands. Linear developments aligned with the provinces geographic structure creates urban corridors while keeping agricultural and open spaces closest to riverine areas which are more vulnerable to flooding over time. Within these corridors, a new type of rural-urbanism can foster social and economic connections across the province, rather than just to Manila, while maintaining the integrity of the environmental systems which drive the region’s form. While the proposal outlined in this document reads at

the scale of the province, this rural-urbanism is the starting point for capacity-building and design projects at a multitude of scales.

Within this concept lies both a challenge and opportunity for the designer: How can design enhance social interactions and foster ecological connectivity across the province?

How can design advance synergies between the ecology of place and networks of social relationships? And how can architecture help to create notions of community within and between uniform housing estates?

Preliminary ideas on this topic are the subject of this book. In line with the goals of Philippine Transmarine Carriers (PTC), a Filipino maritime company spear-heading a more sustainable development model for the province, Starter Communities provides design concepts at two scales: a rural-urban ‘vision plan’ for growth and resiliency at the scale of the province and an exploration of types, sizes and designs of community plans. In their efforts to provide affordable, high quality living, PTC has invested in a large land acquisition to build a new town in Cavite Province (Silang New Town).

In its aspirations, scope, and established partnerships the Silang New Town project seeks to move beyond the typical suburban development, reflecting a larger vision of the PTC group to offer Filipino society a new paradigm of living outside the center city. The numerous partnerships developed also represent a novel approach, bringing numerous stakeholders to the table including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Atkins Group, the Cavite Provincial Government, and the Manila Observatory, an environmental research agency. In parallel to the ongoing

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master planning projects, market surveys and analysis, and transportation studies that characterize projects of this type, the MIT team has centered itself within this constellation, identifying opportunities for collaboration and helping shape a new vision for a rural-urbanism particular to Cavite province and Filipino society. Work up until the publication of this book has resulted in surveys of current and future homeowners affiliated with PTC and their partner housing company, ACM Homes, as well as the organization of an architecturalurban workshop with students from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.

This book is a summary of the work done until now, arranged as an exploration of urban - architectural scales. First, the Context section provides greater insight into how Manila has developed over the last fifty years and the challenges currently faced by Cavite province. The second section provides an overview of the importance of community to be integrated into the design thinking from the preliminary stages of planning, and features work from the January 2019 workshop with MIT School of Architecture and Planning Students.

The next chapter, Resiliency Across Scales, introduces an analysis of the existing systems in the province as the basis to strengthen relationships between and among scales can help better build a resilient province. Finally, the book concludes with a proposal for rural-urban development.

architectural-urban method of design that works across multiple scales. Concepts of community are explored horizontally as they relate to each other within the ‘vertical’ and multi-scalar socio-economic, environmental, and political organizations of Cavite province. Starter Communities is but a beginning. For the current and future residents of Cavite, it seeks a better lifestyle in harmony with the landscape, less dependent on the center city, and less dependent on long commutes and individual car ownership. It seeks neighborhood designs that are more affordable, more resilient, and more community oriented. For architects and urbanists, the project is a call to engage simultaneously in multiple scales at varying capacities rather than attempt a single top-down design. The successful urban project here needs to strategically fix in place those elements that inspire and facilitate opportunities for growth while emphasizing balance between the natural and the built environments. This is the future we imagine.

Rafi Segal and Kelly Leilani Main

While each chapter can stand on its own, offering analysis, observations and ideas to support future work beyond the scope of this project, the chapters also present a unified

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C O N T E X T 22

URBANIZATION IN METRO MANILA PHILIPPINE TRANSMARINE CARRIERS SILANG MUNICIPALITY

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URBANIZATION IN METRO MANILA

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Ch h S out

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Phil

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Manila Cavite Province Calabarzon Region

Su lu S e a

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Sea

While urbanization is a truly global phenomenon, few places are experiencing urban transformation more dramatically than the Philippines. The country has seen a dramatic increase of urban population in the last fifty years, from less than 10 million in 1960 to over 50 million today.4 While urbanization is known to bring potential benefits to citizens through economic growth and poverty reduction, the Philippines has faced a number of structural issues which limit the positive gains normally associated with the development of urban areas, including the country’s unique archipelagic geography and stagnant manufacturing sector.5 Additionally, the shift from an economy and lifestyle of subsistence agriculture directly to the service sector and the country’s high exposure to natural hazards make universal growth hard to accomplish. The Philippines is undoubtedly one the most at-risk countries in the world to climate impacts due to its heavy reliance on agricultural employment and the over 7,000 islands that comprise its distinct topography on the Western edge of the Pacific “Ring of Fire”. In the last thirty years, over 500 natural disaster events have killed more than 70,000 people and caused over $23 billion in damages.

Today, Approximately 50.3 percent of the country’s total land area and 81.3 percent of its population are vulnerable to natural

disasters.6 While disaster management concerns are widespread throughout the Philippines’ many islands, the capital region of Metropolitan Manila is particularly vulnerable.

Beyond the official boundaries of Metropolitan Manila, the Greater Manila Area expands into the neighboring provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Batangas, with more than 24 million people in one way or another connected to this sprawling urban fabric. While the densest parts of the center city estimated to reach 180,000 people per square mile, (one of the highest urban densities in the world), most urbanization continues through the suburbanization and settlement of the metropolitan peripheries.7 Starting in the post-war period of the 1950s and heavily influenced by the American colonial presence, the Philippines government began to provide affordable and middle-income housing options for working-class Filipinos through the construction of suburban housing estates. This post-war formalism grew alongside the proliferation of informal settlements in underutilized land around upper-class estates and job centers. As the city grew and became more congested, the hinterlands likewise expanded, as those with means (time and money), braved long commutes to find access to comfort, open

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space, and the security offered by private, gated communities on the outskirts of the city. To this day, land speculation and demand for higher quality housing drives the conversion of fertile agricultural land into housing estates throughout the largely agricultural provinces which surround Manila Bay and Laguna de Bay. Underneath the foundations of these new homes, the province’s topography moves constantly, full of nutrient rich sediments that flow from the lip of the seismically active Taal Volcano to the mouth of Manila Bay. While some of these housing estates serve the upper classes alone, many gated lowermiddle and middle-income enclaves continue to emerge. These estates represent opportunity for both urban and rural Filipinos: those who desire to escape the noise, pollution, crime, and crowded streets of Manila proper, as well as those who move from rural areas to the urban periphery in order to access better jobs, education, and services. Some of those who move from rural or provincial areas directly into middle class housing estates are family members and dependents of an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW). OFWs play a foundational role in the Philippines economy, with over two million Filipino Citizens working abroad in 2018.8 The historical development of OFWs in Filipino culture, economy and society can also be traced to the American colonial presence established during the Spanish American war at the turn of the 19th century. American cultural norms, good command of the English language, and a primary-commodity export industry all laid the groundwork for a globalized labor force, although large-scale out migration

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from the Philippines didn’t begin until the political and economic crisis of the 1970’s and 1980’s.9 Since then, thousands of Filipinos leave every year to be employed in industries overseas. In 2017 alone, OFWs sent USD $32 billion back to the Philippines in the form of remittances.10 Although these individuals and their families face tremendous hardship and complications brought by long distances away from home, their personal sacrifice is a nearly guaranteed way to lift their families out of poverty by providing money for education, livelihood necessities, and housing. Their sacrifice earns OFWs the name Bagong Bayani, or “new heroes” in Tagalog. The result of their labor also creates conditions for many households where the family that stays at home does not necessarily have to work in order to survive.

While the nuances of global labor flows are not the focus of this work, the story of OFWs and their families are full of complexities that are representative of numerous design challenges and questions presented within the context of Starter Communities. Many households have moved from poor, rural areas in the provinces to Manila, to be closer to services and to have access to modern, middle class housing. Notions of proximal ‘community’ in these spaces are low or non-existent, and many estates have no connection to their surrounding context.

Public spaces and streets are underused.

Safety considerations are another profound challenge. Due to security concerns, almost every Filipino home has gates and barred windows. High walls surround every housing estate, cutting homes off from the beauty of the natural landscape. CCTV security cameras are reminders of both

surveillance and protection. A hot climate means that many people prefer to stay inside in air-conditioned rooms and malls rather than socializing outdoors. Family dynamics are also inconstant. Household numbers shift between the nuclear and extended family depending on OFW deployment scheduling, holidays, and educational schedules. Access to training centers when at home can help further socio-economic mobility, but such training centers are often located in Manila proper, not near the estates, forcing trainees to choose between professional growth and precious family time. What does community mean in these places? What are the benefits that a more communityoriented neighborhood could bring for these families with constantly changing dynamics?

How do the needs of a family who relies on remittances differ from families whose nucleus is constant throughout the year? How do the needs of a family shift throughout the year depending on labor flows? These are questions which are not currently addressed through contemporary real estate products.

The proliferation of dispersed housing estates on the outskirts of Manila raises many questions about the economic and social resilience of households living within living in the dispersed urbanism of Cavite Province. Metropolitan Manila and its environs face a continuous onslaught of typhoons, flooding, sea level rise, earthquakes, tsunami risks, and potential

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for extended droughts. When coupled with the current housing backlog of 5.9 million households in 2015, which is expected to reach 10.5 million households by 2030, according to the Subdivision and Housing Developers Association, new methods for addressing housing and environmental risk are necessary. In line with the goals of Philippine Transmarine Carriers and their partners in the site of a new town in Silang, Starter Communities seeks design solutions in response to these challenges.

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PHILIPPINE TRANSMARINE CARRIERS Philippine Transmarine Carriers (PTC) is a Filipino crew management and training company that serves, trains, and employs Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) to support the global maritime, leisure, and hospitality industries. While PTC began only training maritime crew members, the company has grown in its social and aspirational mission. Beyond workforce training, PTC also helps trainees and their families improve their economic mobility and achieve personal goals such as home ownership.

To help its employees achieve their housing goals, PTC invested in a partnership with ACM Homes, a small, affordablehousing venture founded by three Filipino women committed to supporting the home-ownership aspirations of lowincome Filipinos. In addition to making homeownership accessible, ACM positioned itself as an alternative to the existing predatory lending industry, low-quality real estate market, and corrupt government programming. ACM has also gained notoriety for embedding themselves within the needs of their customers. Early on, they recognized the importance of women in creating accountability within the family and worked with PTC to develop strategies to help cash-poor families access credit and financing mechanisms. ACM Homes also

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became well known for focusing on quality of life for customers over company profit, ensuring that each of their development projects have open space, modernized septic systems, and larger land plots for private gardens. ACM continues to be interested in designing more than just homes or communities but supporting "valuesoriented families" and designing "humancentered living environments."11 While the PTC/ACM partnership has previously concentrated on providing housing for seafarers and other low and middle income Filipinos, PTC has more recently sought to go above and beyond the traditional role of developer. With the acquisition of a large parcel of land in Silang Municipality, Cavite, PTC is seeking to build a new type of sustainable and resilient mixed-use community for a diverse population. The parcel has a prime location with direct access to the proposed CaviteLaguna Expressway (CALAx), which will improve access from Cavite Province to Manila proper. The site offers an opportunity to rethink the current mode of housing development and build higher quality housing in harmony with the environment.

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A family sells food outside their home in an existing PTC/ACM housing development in Cavite

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SILANG METRO MANILA

LAGUNA DE BAY MANILA BAY

SILANG NEW TOWN

The Municipality of Silang is located along the Emilio Alguinado Highway between Manila and Tagaytay. The area's rich alluvial soil deposits located just below the lip of Taal volcano and a mild climate with plentiful rainfall has made Silang a center of agricultural crop production. It is especially well known for its fruit trees, including coconut, coffee, corn, banana, pineapple, and tree crops like mango, lansones, caimito, santol, jackfruit, guava, and avocado.

The Silang New Town site is located in the Northwestern corner of the Municipality of Silang. While the municipality would like to preserve its agricultural identity and attract eco-tourism opportunities, the race to become a city with more independence from the central government has led to numerous recent industrial and residential estate developments despite the lack of a comprehensive land use plan.

CAVITE PROVINCE SILANG MUNICIPALITY

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COMMUNITY 48

STARTING COMMUNITIES CONCEPTS PROJECTS GARDEN BLOCK LOOP DE LOOP VOCATIONAL CAMPUS EDGE PLAZAS

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STARTING COMMUNITIES “Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.”

– Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

Despite its recognized importance for human well-being, community does not have a universal definition, nor a single form or scale. Theories on community can be traced back as far as Plato and St. Augustine, but despite centuries of human thought and reflection, a universal definition remains elusive. There doesn’t seem to be a ‘best’ way for a community to be, but we can conceptualize community in a number of different ways: by shared ideals, common history, physical proximity and dependency, through networks of social ties and allegiances, or via collective frameworks, to name a few.12 Anderson’s use of ‘imagined’ as that which distinguishes one community from another emphasizes the limitless potential of the concept. What defines a community is a malleable, constantly changing, and open to new expressions.

What constitutes a community is limited only by the power of our imagination.

In 1887, the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies was one of the first to publish a descriptive difference between Gemeinschaft, translated as “community”,

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and Gesellschaft, or “society”. Gemeinschaft refers to relations in family, kin groups, neighborhoods, and what Tönnies referred to as “real or organic life”, comprised of those people in one’s immediate environment.

Gesellschaft, in contrast, refers to the associational and mechanical relations of public life, or of the ‘world,’ of those to whom we are connected but in a more distant and rationalized way. One hundred and fifty years later, the intimate concept of an organic, place-based community revolving around family, work, and social life Tönnies described now rarely applies.

Today, more than ever, any given person may live many miles away from where they were born. Millions of people commute by automotive transport to jobs far from their place of residence. Likewise, the proliferation of virtual communities increasingly means that we can be more selective of those we consider friends. Today, many people simultaneously participate in several communities of different kinds, defined by different commonalities and distinguished by different imaginations. These disjunctures of space and time in daily life

have created a moment where Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft have lost their distinctions.

This is especially true in areas of dispersed urbanism, where one has access to urban amenities and social interaction in a formally less dense area. The dispersed qualities of our contemporary urban condition raise serious questions about how to design new residential and civic areas. Current ideas around housing development must address the fact that where we live increasingly has less influence over what we do and how we identify ourselves. This disconnect is partly responsible for the rise in private automobile use and the environmental consequences of reliance on carbon-driven transportation.

Despite the creative opportunity this gap provides, the design and planning fields thus far have failed to create high quality shared physical spaces that take into consideration the social and economic changes outlined above. While our contemporary elected communities, virtual or otherwise, do not rely on spatial proximity to function, this does not decrease the importance of feelings of belonging in the places we call home.

But before it is possible to delve into how to design contemporary communities, a closer look at what we mean by community and how individuals and communities relate is necessary. As eluded to in the introduction of this book, communities are not just made up of individuals – individuals are made up of a diverse range of communities which increasingly transcend immediate temporal and spatial scales. These communities may be nested, or they can be thought of as non-relational except where they intersect through a single individual. We often think of communities as made up solely of people,

but communities have built elements which facilitate interactions amongst members.

Even virtual communities require some type of computer and internet access to function.

In an organization, it is easy to identify the role of an individual, as each person has a title which designates their responsibilities – but what about the single house? A single block? A single housing estate? How do each of these individual elements function within the community that is Cavite Province?

One way to see the relationships among these different scales of community is to adopt the concept of community resilience.

While the term community resilience is often used to describe the ability of a group of people to ‘bounce back’ after a shock, resilience here can also be conceptualized as a measurement of how well a community sticks together, or how strong its bonds are.

While this concept often refers to intangible sentiments, Starter Communities focuses on how the foundational principles of community resilience can be incorporated to the design of residential neighborhoods.

We adopt community resilience as a measurement of social capital, which encompasses three essential elements: social support, social participation, and community bonds13. Social support is represented by informal networks of family and friends. Social participation refers to engagement in formal networks as a part of groups and organizations.

Community bonds are established through participation in group activities and thus require the existence of shared spaces to facilitate gathering. In contrast to past decades of suburban development, which use ‘community’ to define a geographic area

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Community made up of individuals

Individual made up of communities

Nested communities

Communities of different scales

rather than relationships amongst neighbors, Starter Communities uses design to create opportunities for building social capital by strengthening community bonds. It argues this can be done by developing a sense of shared identity around places of interaction: schools, churches, markets, and other civic spaces, and asks how these elements relate to smaller scales of housing and neighborhood design in a dispersed urban condition.

Scale is one tool that can be used to define these spaces of gathering. Administrative boundaries, housing estates, and neighborhood blocks, for example, define very clear organizational scales based on their boundaries. However, this type of boundary does not necessarily describe the type of community that lives there. Church congregations and educational facilities represent other community scales which

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allude to a way of living, but these typologies rarely have a strong relationship to housing and neighborhood design, especially as the networks of their members are increasingly dispersed. An example of a community with a hybrid spatial and social concept in the Philippines is the historic barangay.

While private use of land has been part of Filipino society since pre-colonial times, communal life around shared spaces has always existed alongside. In traditional Filipino practice, individual plots within the barangay were surrounded by the barangay commons, which included woods, open space, grasslands, marshes, and mangroves.

Beyond the individual plot and the commons lay the rivers, lakes, and seacoasts which were also considered to ‘belong’ to the barangay community14. The expanded notions of ownership beyond the individual plot of land served to satisfy needs beyond

the immediate home and garden into the broader territory of society. Traditions in Filipino society allowed the maintenance of active and lively communal life without negating a strong desire for private family life and demand for private ownership. In its original concept, the barangay referred to a scale of about 100 households, though some were larger or smaller. In Cavite today, this concept rarely applies. Instead, a barangay serves as the smallest administrative unit in a municipality and has no relationship to the environment that surrounds it, neglecting the traditional concept of the barangay commons. It does not describe relations amongst its members nor refer to collective ownership of the environment that surrounds it. Planned subdivisions, likewise, are built to minimize cost and have little to no connection to the surrounding landscape.

They are not planned nor designed to enhance communal life but solely focus on arranging individual houses built on individual lots. The community’s internal relationships and external relationship with the environment are both neglected. To improve the quality of development in the province, we can design towards a ruralurban way of life, supporting strong social and civic ties while maintaining healthy relationships and connections to the living landscapes we inhabit.

previous theories and conceptualizations of community we do not seek an ‘ideal’ version to aspire to, as utopian ideals often demand strict protocols of size, behavior and ideology. Rather we seek to design human settlements that foster the collective capacity of communities while allowing individuals freedom and autonomy for personal growth. To design, we ask what are the norms and values that can allow the successful sharing of this ruralurban landscape? What are the rules and obligations which guide interactions there?

We ask ourselves, “how are we going to be when we gather together?”15 An intentional mode of development based in these principles can support individual desires for home ownership, foster communal activities through desirable shared collective spaces, and be more ecologically and environmentally minded. The following chapter presents preliminary ideas from the January 2019 workshop on four different community concepts.

Community is fundamentally about creating belonging, inspiring hospitality and generosity in others, establishing accountability, and discussing possibilities for the future. In this context we understand community not as a singular concept but a condition that can appear in multiple forms and across multiple scales. Unlike

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COMMUNITY CONCEPTS The workshop explored the question of how design can aid in establishing a sense of belonging and sharing through different community concepts. These concepts function as organizational principles for ‘starting’ new communities around shared resources in dispersed urban housing developments. Each of the community concepts evokes a certain scale and type of program we see as essential for the livelihood

THE GARDEN spaces of shared leisure

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and resiliency of a community. Each concept attracts certain users and therefore informs different types of programming and housing development. Likewise, the relationship between localized elements and the urban or provincial scale varies from concept to concept depending on the needs of users.

THE TRANSIT LINE shared ride and transport

THE SCHOOL spaces of shared learning

THE PLAZA spaces of shared culture and commerce

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PROJECTS GARDEN BLOCK LOOP DE LOOP VOCATIONAL CAMPUS EDGE PLAZAS

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GARDEN BLOCK Nitzan Zilberman + Nof Nathansohn According to The Report on Seafarers Home Considerations, 80% of seafarers desire a private garden and a public park in their neighborhood. Even in monotonous tract housing developments, the individual cultivation of private gardens strengthens each family’s identity and individuality, resulting in a diverse and varied looking neighborhood. In contrast, public gardens in these estates are often neglected. This is partly due to the transfer of responsibility from property managers to homeowners associations. When this transfer is unsuccessful, these spaces are often abandoned.

This project explores a design strategy that enables a combination of public and private green spaces. Using one basic housing module, we can create a fifty unit block where no green space is left overlooked. The majority of green areas in our block are designed as semi-public areas where two or three families share a common area adjacent to their home, creating an intimate community garden. By lifting the communal gardens to the second floor, an open space is unlocked on the ground floor, offering a parking spot for each house or a public space that can be used for gathering, communal meals and community celebrations. Taking into consideration the importance of both the public and private gardens for Filipino society, we set out to find a solution that combines both individual needs and enables the structuring of a community around one of the most important aspects of the home: the garden.

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Commercial street A small commercial street running from the north up to the middle of the block offers 6 units that include storefronts. This decision was made after visiting the estates and noticing that many households sell items through their windows.

Protea Formosa Leucospermun formosum

RECREATING THE BLOCK SCALE OF SHARING: L Network of gardens Increases safecty and walkability

Philippine Ground Orchid Spathoglottis plicata

Dwarf Umbrella Tree Schefflera arboricola

Block party On the northern and southern ends of the block there are 2 parking lots owned by 8 units that could be used as an event space on weekends. Once a weeks residents move their cars and free up space for community celebrations.

Rather than a repetition of single units, the garden block is composed of a wide variety of modular elements. The diversity of arrangements mean that there are more spaces for unique encounters as well as privacy.

Dragron Tree Dracaena marginata

Bakalat Ziziplus talanai

Monstera Deliciosa Philodendron pertusum

Pineapple Ananas comosus Kris Plant Alocasia sanderiana

Economic Cluster This part of the block is for low income housing. It is formed by 12 units, each one is 50 sqm and has either a shared or a communal garden. Each unit has an adjacent parking space.

Round-leaf Fountain Palm Saribus rotundifolia

Coconut Cocos nucifera 60

Coconut Cocos nucifera

Single, double or triple elevated gardens The majority of green areas in the block are designed as semi-public areas where two or three families share a common garden. By elevating the communal gardens to the second level, an open space is unlocked on the ground floor offering parking and public spaces for each house.

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LOT STRATEGY TRADITIONAL BLOCK

BLOCK ALTERNATIVE

TRADITIONAL LOT USE

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PROPOSED LOT USE

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DEFINING THE UNIT

Private ground floor garden

Private Garden Increases individuality

Ground floor garden 100 Sqm house 50 Sqm garden

Private ground floor garden + Private roof garden

Gound floor ground garden + roof garden 100 Sqm house 100+ Sqm garden

Private ground floor garden + Shared elevated garden Ground floor garden + shared 50-100 Sqm house 50-100 Sqm garden 40-60 Sqm shared garden

Private garden Shared garden

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CLUSTERING UNITS SCALE OF SHARING: S Communal garden: 2+ neighbors Increases social interactions Elevated shared gardens free up space on ground floor for parking and public space

2 House Cluster alternative

Ground floor parking + private gardens

Private roof garden + shared elevated garden

3 House Cluster alternative 2 House Cluster 50-100 Sqm house 50-100 Sqm garden 40-60 Sqm shared garden

Ground floor parking + private gardens

Private roof garden + shared elevated garden

4 House Cluster alternative

3 House Cluster 50-100 Sqm house 50 Sqm garden 40-60 Sqm shared garden Private garden Shared garden

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CLUSTERING UNITS SCALE OF SHARING: M

Private garden

8 HOUSE CLUSTER

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COMMERCIAL STREET

Shared garden

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ASSEMBLING THE BLOCK

GROUND FLOOR BLOCK PROPOSAL

SCALE OF SHARING: L Network of gardens Increases safety and walkability

ROOF PLAN

Private garden Shared garden

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COMMUNITY

Dw

The garden block allows for new types of community that are based on sharing leisure spaces without sacrificing privacy or private property. The shared gardens also create social spaces and shaded parking areas by joining the second floor balconies. Here, neighbors find themselves able to share in order to maximize their available area for enjoying outside gardening.

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Block proposal

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LOOP DE LOOP Mengqi He + Zhifei Xu Metro Manila is infamous for its traffic congestion, the result of rapid urbanization without proper infrastructure planning and limited land use management. Residents of Cavite who work in Manila have to commute daily on jammed freeways, spending hours in slow traffic or complete standstill.

Over the past decade, as Metro Manila expanded, this traffic congestion has permeated to larger and less developed areas where infrastructure and planning are not yet in place to sustain development, including in Silang. Since the new infrastructure plan to create stronger connectivity via the construction of the Cavite-Laguna Expressway (CALAx) was proposed, New Silang Town has an opportunity to become a new destination in Cavite Province due to its strategic location. To learn from the failures of the past, we ask the questions: when new infrastructure is developed, how can it change commuters’ quality of life? What impact can transportation have on development patterns? How can we create a sense of community with transportation in mind?

Against the backdrop of projected population increases, we propose a midrise mixed-use tower with an integrated transportation system to create a community centered around a new commuter culture. The development takes a circular form. On one hand, the circular form allows smooth and direct access off CALAx highway and local streets for residents. On the other, the circular design forms a community centered around the inside courtyard while preserving the outside landscape for views across the province. The development also minimizes its environmental impact with a pillar foundation, allowing a natural ravine to wind through the courtyard. While seemingly radical, this development not only fulfills the basic needs of residents but also proposes a new communal lifestyle for the future. Ultimately, the project strives to demonstrate that while transportation could be used to condense the population, reduce traffic, and minimize environmental impact, it is also possible to have nature and urbanization at the same time.

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COMMUNITY AND TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

y

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Arn a

The circular form allows smooth and direct access off CALAx highway and local streets for both private and public transportation. Cars and buses entering the development can avoid the traffic jam in local streets, disembark in our development and enjoy easy access to their homes or other destinations.

Dr

Dr

D to M. Crisan

Gov ern

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Dr

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L CA Ax

Emilio o Hw y

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Proposed Road Proposed Community Major Roads Minor Roads CALAx (proposed)

SITE Community with Integrated Transportation System

Site

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Industrial Commercial

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EXISTING

PROPOSED

HOUSING TYPOLOGIES The tower has two unit typologies: one condo style unit with smaller square footage which can be purchased by younger families or single person households, as well as a traditional two-story house with additional bedrooms for growing families.

footprint of existing development

proposed development

condo style

multi-gated and trafic jams

continuous flows

house style ~50m

2

~90m

â&#x20AC;&#x153;gardenâ&#x20AC;?< 5m2

2

garden + communal space structure framework

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SHARING WITH NATURE Loop de Loop forms a community with both an inside courtyard and outside landscape that is preserved by building vertically. This development minimizes its environmental impact with a pillar foundation, allowing a natural ravine to wind through the courtyard. Additionally, the circular courtyard encourages sharing and is programmed as shared space.

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PROGRAMMING THE COURTYARD

sport fields

agriculture

mix of uses

tree park view from house

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VOCATIONAL CAMPUS Marlena Fauer + Mengfu Kuo Overseas Filipino Workers play a vital role in the Filipino economy and also in society, earning them the title of “Bagong Bayani”, or “New Heroes” in Tagalog.

OFWs find training in a wide variety of vocational schools in fields ranging from nursing and seafaring to agriculture and hospitality, finding work both in the Philippines and abroad. The current concentration of vocational schools in Manila leads to increased traffic congestion in the city and lowers the quality of life for students who have to commute far distances away from their families.

Students may also often live in tiny apartments in the city, only traveling home during the holidays. Relocating a concentration of these training facilities to outside of Manila allows for more shared open space and amenities, a milder climate, and relief from the crowded city-center.

The vocational campus attracts students, workers, trainees, and experts to form a community focused on learning, exchange, hospitality, and shared resources.

The collective campus brings together multiple vocational trades to stimulate cross-disciplinary knowledge production and provides a variety of housing types to address the challenges of seasonal student housing. Individual dormitories or apartments can be rented out to tourists who want to escape Manila for the summer months, or can be bought timeshare units that are occupied by students or trainees during the academic year. Year-round programming serves to both to stimulate the local economy and build a community centered around the combination of learning and leisure.

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EXISTING INDUSTRIAL PARK

FUTURE RESIDENTIAL GROWTH

FUTURE RESIDENTIAL GROWTH

RECREATION CORRIDORS

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MARITIME WELLNESS THERAPY

HOSPITALITY CULINARY AGROTOURISM AGRICULTURE

ENVIRONMENTAL FIELD RESEARCH

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LINKING RESIDENTIAL AND INDUSTRIAL

VOCATIONAL TRAINING IN REGION SCALE

COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES / EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM

LEISURE / VOCATIONAL TRAINING

LIVING / RENTING

CALAx RAVINE

RESIDENTIAL

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CAMPUS

INDUSTRIAL

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DE LA SALLE CAMPUS FIRST CAVITE INDUSTRIAL ESTATE

8km

Campus(5km2)

NEW SILANG SITE

IN BETWEEN

CONNECTOR

ENTRANCE

The campus is located between the

The site mediates the flow between CALAx,

The campus is the northern entrance into

industrial park and new residential areas

residential zones and industrial park

New Silang Town

SILANG TOWN

GATEWAY BUSSINESS PARK EAGLE RIDGE GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB

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PTC SITE

HIGHWAY EXI T

CAMPUS

PROPOSED EXPRESSWAY

HIGH DENSITY RESIDENTIAL

EXISTING NATIONAL ROADS

THE RIVIERA GOLF CLUB

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ZONING

PATH

PUBLIC

CAMPUS

Residential / Campus / Industrial Park

In addition to primary vertical connections,

Mixed-use open spaces are located along

Campus-oriented open spaces are

horizontal paths provide smaller scale

horizontal secondary pathways

surrounded by school buildings

pedestrial ciculation

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EDGE PLAZAS Stratton Coffman + Rachel Li-Jiang Luo

During the Spanish colonial period, settlement construction was characterized by the Spanish “Laws of the Indies,” which centered around plazas, bringing people in the community together with a variety of centralized political, religious, commercial, and recreational activities. These public squares were framed by the town hall, the church, and commercial space, and provided a central location for gatherings. However, the role of these critical spaces declined in the country after the 1970s due to a violent crackdown on political descent. Fear of safety, intensifying land-use demands from urbanization and population growth, and the rise of air-conditioned malls, led to the decline of these once central social spaces. Simultaneously, isolated suburban developments in Cavite have created a fragmented urbanization with limited public space.

This project re-imagines the plaza as piece of contemporary socio-economic infrastructure—public space that serves as a physical connector between fragmented developments and creates new opportunities for social interaction.

Our model represents this connectivity through four distinct panels that come together to give form to the plaza as a unifying public space. We center our plaza around the capital building and church to highlight Silang New Town’s institutional anchors, which is located at the southeast edge of the site. To meet the aspirations of the local community, which is entering the middle class, we introduce a mixture of small-scale retail and malls to feature local produce while offering upscale shopping. These form the western and southern panels. On the eastern panel, we leave open space along the ravine for entertainment and recreation that showcases Cavite’s natural beauty while minimizing exposure of buildings to flooding and landslides. Finally, the southern panel leaves room for new housing developments because, unlike the traditional plaza, ours sits at the town’s edge rather than the center. In this way, the plaza serves as an anchor for new developments and can facilitate community formation even in a dispersed rural-urbanism.

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Church and Government Buildings The northern area includes both a church and

FOUR NODES

government building to anchor the plaza between the new development and existing development using public

The edge plaza brings multiple uses around a centralized area that is accessible for all. In Silang New Town, the edge plaza adjacent to a new government building provides commercial and recreational activities for visitors as well as a local amenity for residents living within the nearby neighborhoods. By situating itself at the edge, it also leaves an opening for future residents of adjacent developments to connect, reducing the current isolation and fragmentation of many housing estates in Cavite.

institutions.

Connections to Existing Residential One side of the plaza includes a mixed-use commercial and residential zone, bringing residents from the existing neighborhood into the new public space.

Preserving Open Space Rather than build all the way to the ravine, the plaza preserves one edge as a green space which opens out onto the natural beauty of a nearby ravine. This has the dual benefit of providing necessary public green space while also reducing exposure to flood risk and allowing plenty of vegetation nearby for cooling.

Connections to Future Residential The southern end of the plaza intentionally borders a future development site, inviting future residents into the public space to share with residents from the neighboring development.

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NEW SILANG

NEW SILANG

SILANG

SILANG

CONNECTING TO SILANG In addition to connecting to future developments along its edge, the plaza sets an example for future opportunities connecting Silang New Town to the existing town of Silang and other housing estates located just a few kilometers away. Preserving accessible open space along the riverine corridor not only reduces hazard exposure but creates a recreational greenway that residents and tourists can use for walking, biking, or simply enjoying being outside in the pleasant climate.

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EXISTING

DEVELOPMENT OF PLAZA

The proposed development has an edge

PTC can develop a plaza which anchors the

Higher land values around the public

The plaza emphasizes accessible open space

condition where future development

public institution at the edge and invites

institution can draw development resources

near the riverine systems to take advantage

opportunities will arise because of the

many uses adjacent to it

towards the new edge

of natural irrigation, foliage, and reduce

proposed public infrastructure investments

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NEW HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS

OPEN SPACE

exposure of buildings to flood risk.

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STUDIO VISIT

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P R O V I N C E

RESILIENCE ACROSS SCALES ENVIRONMENT INFRASTRUCTURE SOCIETY ECONOMY SETTLEMENTS PROPOSAL CONCEPT RURAL-URBAN SECTIONS URBAN BANDS ECO-CORRIDORS

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RESILIENCE ACROSS SCALES Resilience is a topic of utmost importance in urban planning and design. Shifts in contemporary weather patterns caused by anthropogenic climate change are causing chronic stressors on ecological systems that provide us with food and water and higher occurrences of extreme weather events like hurricanes, typhoons, and heatwaves. Simultaneously, we are increasingly connected through globalization and technological advancements that have brought an increasing number of linkages between economies, societies, and infrastructure systems across the globe. These connections can make us vulnerable to decisions and disinvestments far from home. What does it mean to be resilient to this wide variety of environmental and economic risks? The ubiquity of the term resilience in application to human systems has brought its core meaning into question and made the concept difficult to apply in practice.16 However, designing and planning more equitable, safe, sustainable, and resilient human settlements to respond to contemporary hazards is a necessary endeavor.

While resilience at its core describes the ability of system to continue functioning in the face of a disruption, the term is not applied uniformly across all contexts.

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In policy, planning, and design, the application of resilience is determined by the scale, system, and actors in question.

Scale, like environment, space, or place, is one of the ways we understand the environments where we live. It also informs how we design small and large systems and spaces. Scale is not predefined but is a way of understanding complexity by recognizing relationships between seemingly disparate parts.

Since urban areas are complex systems of interconnected elements, changes at different levels of the system inevitably impact one another. This process can explained through the concept of Panarchy, a conceptual framework to account for the conflicting characteristics of all complex systems, including stability and change.17 Panarchy is a framework for exploring the way that the resilience of social and ecological systems interact.

It thus can help illuminate how people, their communities, their cities, and their natural environment are mutually dependent on one another. Even the smallest scale of the individual home has an impact at larger scales. While the individual home may be a private space, it impacts the larger environment and therefore does not constitute a fully private function.18 It impacts broader

ecological systems depending on where it is sited and it is related to larger scales of collective administration such as the municipality, the province, and the state. Watersheds are another example - if a single factory dumps industrial effluent into a river, it impacts the water quality of the entire hydrological network. Its impacts transcend its scale. This interpretation of panarchy, as the relationship between social and ecological systems in the built environment, is the conceptual basis for designing a more resilient province at many scales such as the single home, the housing estate, and Cavite province as a whole.

Drawing attention to the relationships

between social and ecological elements is also a part of distinguishing the differences between urban and rural resilience. In Cavite, a rapidly urbanizing but historically rural province, resilience planning must draw from both urban and rural practice to bridge the complex built and environmental challenges present there. Here we face another problem in that approaches to resiliency have primarily been thought of as either for the city or for rural areas but not for a rural-urban condition. How can we apply a novel concept of resiliency to this rural-urban context? In what way does it draw from and differ from both rural and urban practices and strategies?

While a hybrid model can be applied to the emerging rural-urban environment

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in Cavite, the lessons here are inevitably relevant for urbanizing areas in other parts of the world.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program, one of the leading recent initiatives to apply resiliency onto the built environment, concentrates on the city as a fully urbanized entity. As such, it defines urban resilience as “the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience.”19 Urban resilience looks at many of the overlapping and intertwined infrastructural elements, such as transportation and electricity lines, and the threats that such systems may face in the event of shocks and stresses. The sheer amount of investment in the built infrastructure of cities, whether it be in roads, buildings, or services, coupled with the vast numbers of people who rely on these systems for their lives and livelihoods, requires urban resilience planning to focus both on rapid recovery after a shock and hazard mitigation through hard and gray infrastructure. Urban environments also have complex governance systems and social networks which necessitate a focus on adaptive management and institutional learning in the face of threats. While cities must adapt and be flexible in the face of adversity, sunk costs, high property values, and the presence of significant amounts of built infrastructure limit truly adaptive and transformative forms of resilience which

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are more common to rural systems.

Rural resilience in contrast focuses on how a rural area can transform in the face of systemic stress. Rural landscapes provide three main functions: agriculture; rural services such as agrotourism, ecosystem services, recreation opportunities, and; conservation of nature.20 Unlike cities, which maintain their general form and function even when faced with threats, rural systems are more flexible and adaptable to change.21 For example, new weather patterns may result in lower yields of traditional crops, forcing farmers to change their production strategies. Surface water sources such as lakes and rivers may be polluted by industrialization, contaminating local water supply and requiring farmers to use alternative water systems. In urbanizing areas, farmers may sell their land to developers, who convert fertile land into foundations for housing, roads, and businesses. Under this definition, the conversion of rural areas into urban ones is a failure in rural resilience, as all three main functions of rural areas are lost. Yet the conversion of these lands does not necessarily mean that the rural area has been incorporated into the ‘city’ or can adopt urban resilience strategies. Thus, a new type of resilience planning is necessary to address the rural-urban character of such plsvrd.

Starter Communities proposes a new type of rural-urban resilience: one that maintains the adaptability of rural systems within the broader paradigm of a dispersed urban condition. In Cavite,

rural and urban resiliency become linked, as the line between what is rural and what is urban is often unclear and the provincial fabric includes a continuously changing territory of mixed densities of built and unbuilt pockets, interwoven with various degrees of interaction and reliance. Agricultural practices persist despite the construction of massive urban infrastructures such as highways and residential developments.

Drawing from the panarchy framework, Starter Communities approaches ruralurban resilience using the concept of scale to examine relationships between environmental and social features of Cavite. Some scalar elements in Cavite include the administrative scales of the Philippines (Nation, Region, Province, City/Municipality, Barangay); infrastructural elements within the province such as roads (national/primary, provincial/secondary, municipal/ tertiary); residential typologies (planned estate, single family home, historic town); agricultural practices (backyard farming, small-scale crop production; industrial plantations; industrial packaging and manufacturing); shopping (bodega, commercial street, store, mall); industry and employment (self-employed, collective, factory, call center, OFW), and; environmental elements such as hydrological (stream, river, watershed, lake, bay, ocean). These elements are all interconnected to one another, but the way that we act upon them changes depending upon the agencies and actors involved in their management22. Aside from administrative jurisdictions,

different scales of ecological, social, virtual, and physical communities also exist, from a housing development to a church congregation, as examples.

The following chapter examines these and other relationships in the province to consider how regional housing design can increase resiliency by articulating relationships between architectural and environmental elements across multiple scales. The following section begins with a preliminary analysis of provincial elements across and within various scales. We have applied a ‘layered’ analysis, common when analyzing urban environments, to the province as a whole. Such analysis allows an overlay of one system onto the other to examine where and how they interact.

This analytical method proposes that the province can be understood as a form of urbanism (yet one significantly different than how we understand a city) in the sense that natural and built components can be coordinated and shaped as equally important systems. Reading the province as a very large form of urbanity facilities our ability to act on one system (i.e. social) while understanding the impact that action will have on another (i.e. environmental). As the chapter Community provided preliminary design strategies at one scale, this chapter also provides a conceptual design framework at the scale of the province. The analysis is followed by a provincial development concept for novel rural-urbanism that can build resilience by incorporating social and ecological elements at various scales.

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Cavite's Four Ecological Zones Cavite's unique geomorphology lends itself to reading in section. In this view, we can see Cavite's four distinct zones, ranging from the coastal plain to the upland mountains.

B

Distinct topography is also visible in the cross sections, such as those in the central hills shown in Section B, which feature the ravines of the province's numerous watersheds.

This reference serves as the basis for analyzing the province as a whole.

A

coastal plain

lowland alluvial plain

central hills

upland mountains

Lake Taal

Manila Bay

SECTION A

Ravine

SECTION B

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ENVIRONMENT

HYDROLOGY CLIMATE HAZARDS

Fault Line Major River Minor River River Watershed Topography Prevailing Winds Coastline Agro-Forestry and Crop Development Forest Reserve Moderate-Risk Hazard Zone Multiple or High-Risk Hazard Zone Moderate-Risk Flood Zone High-Risk Flood Zone

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ENVIRONMENT: READING ACROSS ECOLOGICAL SCALES

Cavite's well-defined topography is the foundational principle for developing the province in harmony with natural systems.

Shaped by an active volcano in the south and surrounded by water, the province has a unique identity in that it is both abundant in natural resources as well as prone to extreme environmental risks. The topography lends itself to a wide variety of industrial and agricultural uses, which move along the provincial section with the same gradient lines as the slope.

Hydrology is one of the most important features of this landscape, as water it lends itself to predicting future and present hazards as well as identifying strategies for economic growth and development. In the upper areas of the province, water is a clean and abundant resource which poses limited risk to built infrastructure. In the lowlands, however, the rivers are prone to flooding and function primarily as a garbage dump. The

lowland alluvial plain Salt watercoastal plain Dumping Agriculture intrusion

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less care is given to this critical ecosystem the more potential harm it may cause for humans. This will be increasingly important to consider as climate change is expected to bring an increase in precipitation to Cavite, although dry periods are also possible.

Learning to live with water by working with its flows rather than against them will be an essential medium for any spatial planning strategy. Water also should not be seen only as a liability but also as an immense asset for the region's growing population and its long history of tourism, leisure, and agriculture.

Although significant amounts of agricultural land are being lost to housing development, opportunities for furthering investments in the agricultural and tourism industries imply that water management strategies will remain critical in the years to come, especially as groundwater resources are depleted.

central hills

upland mountains

Land slides

Fishing and Tourism

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Ba y

The province is also cut by six major rivers: the Maragondon, Labac, CaĂąas, San Juan, Bacoor, and Imus. There is an abundance of springs, waterfalls and small rivers in these watersheds, particularly in the upland area.

These include Balite (Amadeo), Saluysoy (Alfonso), Matang Tubig (Tagaytay), Malakas (General Aguinaldo), and Ulo (Mendez).

Rivers in the upland areas are used for recreational purposes, domestic uses, and irrigation while most of the rivers in the lower lands of Cavite are used as discharge sites from industrial, residential, and commercial activities. Common pollutants include industrial effluents, domestic

sewage, garbage disposal and runoff from site development projects. As a result, the water quality of the rivers is dramatically deteriorated by the time it reaches the West Philippine Sea.

L aguna

Cavite is a province shaped by water. Cavite is surrounded by four major bodies of water: the West Philippine Sea, Manila Bay, Bacoor Bay and CaĂąacao Bay, with a coastline that stretches over 120 kilometers, passing through Cavite City, City of Bacoor, Kawit, Noveleta, Rosario, Tanza, Naic, Maragondon and Ternate.

Groundwater is also an important water resource throughout the province.

However, over-extraction is leading to numerous concerns about future water availability, especially in coastal areas where saltwater intrusion is resulting in the loss of potable resources. A study from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) found that groundwater in Cavite is depleting at a rate of 1 meter every year.

Major River Minor River River Watershed Provincial Boundary / Eco-zones Water Tsunami Risk Zone High Risk Flood Zone Moderate Risk Flood Zone Surrounding Land 136

l L a k e Ta a

137

A

600 m

San Juan River Watershed

B

Each watershed passes through the four distinct ecological zones. In the mountainous terrain, the river flows through deeper ravines, then becomes an alluvial plain before it reaches the coast. Each of the four zones faces different challenges in regard to water management, from over-extraction of groundwater aquifer in the lowlands, to salt water intrusion in the coastal

C

zones, to rain-induced landslides in the upland areas.

0m

D

A

C

D

coastal plain 138

lowland alluvial plain

B

central hills

upland mountains 139

CLIMATE

am ih

an

|p re va il

in

g

wi n

ds

N

Within this broad trend, Cavite is divided into four distinct physiographical areas: the lowest lowland area (coastal plain), the lowland area (coastal and alluvial plains), central hilly (rolling tuffaceous plateau) and upland mountainous area (flat to rugged topography). About 41.08% of the Province's land area is classified as undulating to rolling in steepness, meaning its slope gradient is about 8-18%. This type of terrain is found mostly in the central hills, which includes Silang Municipality.

The hottest temperatures are observed in the month of May while it is coldest in January, which is also the driest month of the year. The heaviest rains fall in the month of July. The annual rainfall of Cavite ranges from about 1,500 mm to about 2,000 mm, although higher elevations see more rain. Climate change is predicted to bring increasing precipitation for the province in the years to come.

The dramatic difference between the highest topographies around Taal volcano and the coastal plains result in significant climate variation between the north and south. This has an impact on the types of economic activities which take place there.

The central hills are predominately used for agriculture and crop production due to the rich alluvial soil and moderate temperatures.

For example, Tagaytay is a major tourist destination for many families in the Metro Manila area seeking to escape the summer heat due to its much cooler temperatures.

E

ds

W

h m aba on g so at on | w in

Cavite is a Type 1 climate, meaning it has two pronounced seasons: dry from November to April and wet during the rest of the year. Cavite’s geomorphology is driven by its location on the side of Taal volcano, which flanks the southern border of the province and is also home to the Tagaytay metro area. From the lip of Taal, the province slopes gradually down until it reaches the West Philippine Sea.

tag-lamig

typhoon path

S

tag-init

tag-ulan bagyo

500

35°C 400

30°C

300

200 25°C 100

JAN

140

FEB

MAR

APR

MAY

JUN

JUL

AUG

SEP

OCT

NOV

DEC

141

central hills

NO V

OCT P SE

NO V

OCT

APR MA Y

P SE

B

R MA

APR

JU

AU G

N JUL

MA Y

MA Y

NO V

B

R MA

APR

OCT

FE

C DE

JUL

B

P SE

FE

C DE

AU G

FE

R MA

Eco-Zone Annual Temperature and Rainfall

JAN

JAN

JAN

C DE

upland mountains

N

lowland alluvial plain

JU

coastal plain

JU

AU G

N JUL

650 m

Avg. Temp. Increase 2010 142

2018 143

GEOLOGICAL HAZARDS

HYDRO-METEOROLOGICAL HAZARDS

HAZARD ZONES Cavite has multiple environmental hazards which are important for physical planning including: coastal and riverine flooding; rainfall induced landslides; storm surge; ground shaking; liquefaction; tsunami; ground rupture and earthquake induced landslides.

Flooding is a common hazard and one of the most important to address. Flooding generally follows two main categories: river overflow flooding and inland flooding. River overflow floods are usually associated with typhoons, where river systems overflow their banks due to heavy rainfall. During typhoons and heavy rains, the lowland part of the province is very susceptible to coastal and riverine flooding. The water volume coming from the upland part of the province contributes to a large increase in the volume of water in the lowland rivers and tributaries. The upland municipalities of Indang, Amadeo and Silang also experience overflow flooding but this is much less common. In general, flooding in the upland areas affects only those households that settle along the river channels. In contrast, inland floods are defined as inundation caused by overflow from local drainage channels or surface water pooling caused from runoff. Tidal flooding also falls in this

144

category. Inland flooding in Cavite is a result of inadequate flow capacity of various rivers and tributaries in the province. The floods usually occur at low dike sections, narrow or bottleneck sections and the bridge sections, where drainage systems become clogged with debris. This kind of flooding can also be attributed to intensive land conversion and development for industrial and residential uses.

According to a study of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), inland flooding is due to a wide variety of factors, including: low elevated ground level below the tidal level; inadequate capacity of existing drainage facilities; clogging of drainage channels due to solid waste; illegal encroachment of structures in the drainage channels, and; reclamation of the existing natural retarding basins. It is important to note that inland flooding is not necessarily caused by adverse weather conditions. Even light rainfall and natural tidal level changes can cause this kind of inundation. As land development continues to increase, flood hazard may also increase without proper spatial planning, enforcement of regulation, and construction of sufficient storm water management strategies.

* Timeline shows geological hazards throughout the Philippines and hydrometeorological hazards that directly affected Cavite province.

145

FLOOD RISK

LIQUEFACTION RISK

LANDSLIDE RISK

Elevation

0-2m

2 - 30 m

30 - 400 m

above 400 m

Slope

below 0.5%

0.5%

0.5% -2.0%

above 2.0%

Inland Flooding

Rain-Induced Landslides

Hazards

Storm Surge

Coastal Flooding

Tsunami

Liquefaction

Rain-Induced Landslides

Coastal Flooding

Inland Flooding

Liquefaction

Rain-Induced Landslides

Earthquake-Induced Landslides

Inland Flooding

Ground Shaking

Ground Shaking

Earthquake

Ground Shaking

GROUNDSHAKING RISK

Earthquake-Induced Landslides Ground Shaking Earthquake

Earthquake

Earthquake 650 m

146

coastal plain

lowland alluvial plain

central hills

upland mountains

147

INFRASTRUCTURE

ENERGY MOBILITY COMMUNICATION

149

THE MISSING MIDDLE Infrastructure development has been concentrated in the few municipalities located close to Metro Manila. As a result, the population of these municipalities has increased dramatically, and infrastructure to support life there has followed suit. In addition to those municipalities which are located close to Manila, Tagaytay city has also received a fair amount of infrastructure investment due to its critical destination as a tourist hub for the entire region.

Despite this, infrastructure is generally well-provisioned throughout the province.

The biggest challenge by far is that of transportation, which takes up nearly 10% of the average Caviteno household budget and hours of daily life due to long commute times. Since the urbanization process has happened so rapidly, infrastructure has generally had to follow rather than precede the construction of housing and industrial estates.

EMILIO AGUINALDO HIGHWAY

Energy, transportation infrastructure, and communications all fall within the support systems which are developed to feed urbanization. As the northern/coastal and southern parts of the province have continued to densify, less attention has been given to the middle. As a result, we see concentrations of infrastructure in highly developed urban areas and lower access in rural areas.

150

coastal plain

lowland alluvial plain

Industrial and Residential Development

central hills

upland mountains

Tagaytay Urban Tourist Zone

151

ENERGY Electric power for the entire province of Cavite is supplied by the National Power Corporation (NPC) through the Manila Electric Company (MERALCO).

The provinceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energization rate is 100%, meaning that all barangays have access to electric power. MERALCO is the Philippines' largest electric power distribution company, providing power to 5.56 million consumers in 35 cities and 76 Municipalities.

MERALCO has fifteen (15) substations and twenty-three (23) sub-transmission distribution lines and transformers facilities; seven (7) existing metering facilities; and 23,186 streetlight facilities.

Despite that electric power is readily available to every barangays in Cavite, there are still some households that are not

connected. The most common reason for the roughly four thousand households which are not connected is the high cost of connecting to the system since their homes are located far away from the central lines, often in agricultural fields. Continued urbanization and industrialization have contributed to a dramatic increase in energy demand throughout Cavite. This increase in demand calls for the improvement of existing power facilities as well as exploration and installation of alternative power sources that could favorably reduce costs for industrial and commercial users. Numerous natural gas pipeline connections have been proposed, although none currently exist.

Meralco's customer accounts

Residential 6,086,000

Commercial 514,000

152

www.meralco.com.ph

Industrial 10,000

Streetlights 5,000

153

154

155

MOBILITY

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Having an efficient and effective transport system, access roads and traffic circulation is a good indicator of a well-organized province and is an added plus factor for investment that will likely leads to development.â&#x20AC;?

- Provincial Development and Physical Framework Plan 2010 - 2020

Road clasification and types of pavement in Cavite

Image source: Investvine

156

157

EMILIO AGUINALDO HWY

2.50 m

18.00 m

2.50 m

0m

1m

5m

CALAx (PROPOSED)

12.00 m 0m

158

1m

5m

159

GOVERNORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S DRIVE

1m

1m

12.00 m

1m

1m

12.00 m

0m

0m

1m

5m

1m

5m

INTERNAL STREET

x

6.00 m

1.5m

0m

x

6.00 m

0m

160

1m

5m

1.5m

1m

5m

161

COMMUNICATION â&#x20AC;&#x153;In addition to telephone services and cellular mobile telephone system providers available in Cavite, radio has also proven to be an effective development communication channel. Over the past decades, radio is also acknowledged as the primary source of news and the most pervasive, persuasive, and credible medium. Based on record from National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), Region IV-A, Batangas City, there are two radio stations operating in the province, the Delta Broadcasting System and De La Salle University. There are also registered radio groups that help the community especially at times of disasters..."

- Provincial Development and Physical Framework Plan 2010 - 2020

162

163

Seat of Provincial Government Trece Martires

S O C I E T Y

METRO MANILA

ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES DEMOGRAPHICS EDUCATION

Legislative District Municipal Boundary Barangay Boundary City Designation Seat of Provincial Government Church

BATANGAS

Municipal Hall University School

Population Density

165

BECOMING A CITY Municipalities fall under the jurisdiction of the provincial government. However, when a municipality achieves a certain number of criteria, they have the opportunity to become a city. In doing do, they receive additional funding from the IRS and autonomy for planning and spending decisions. Incorporation from a municipality to a city can help Local Government Units (LGUs) address their more urban challenges and opportunities which are often outside the purview of rural-oriented provincial and municipal governments.

square kilometers, as certified by the Land Management Bureau, with contiguity not being a requisite for areas that are on two or more islands.

In order to become a city, a municipality has to meet the following requirements: first, a locally generated income of at least 100 million Philippine Pesos for the last two consecutive years, as certified by the Department of Finance, and; second a population of at least 150,000, as certified by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA); or a contiguous territory of 100

The opportunities that arise for municipalities to convert to cities means that some will attract residential and industrial development without having the local financing and capacity to provide public infrastructure such as roads, resulting in the isolated and fragmented estates with poor connectivity one sees today.

coastal plain

lowland alluvial plain

The decision to apply to become a city is a difficult one for LGUs which must be approved both by congress as well as by local vote. Sometimes, municipal bids for cityhood are rejected by plebicite vote, showcasing the tension between residents who would prefer to preserve the more rural qualities of their local area.

central hills

Cities of Bacor, Imus, Dasmarinas, Trece Martirez

166

upland mountains

City of Tagatay

167

ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES Cavite is divided into seven legislative districts composed of 19 municipalities and four cities with 829 barangays. The four cities include the Seat of the Provincial Government -Trece Martires City, the Defense Frontier – Cavite City, the Provincial Summer Capital - Tagaytay City and the newly-declared City of Dasmariñas. The Cities of Dasmariñas, Bacoor, Imus and General Trias and the Municipalities Silang and Tanza are the largest population settlements accounting for 67% of the total population. The Municipality of General Aguinaldo has the smallest with only 22,220 people, or 0.60% of the provincial population.

Only nine of the 23 cities and municipalities increased their population shares during the period of 2010-2015. The City of Imus gained the largest (a net increase of 1.22%) followed by Trece Martires City, City of Gen. Trias, Carmona, Naic, Gen. E. Aguinaldo, Tanza, Rosario and Ternate.

The uneven development of municipalities has led to congestion in the north and lack of investment in the south. It should be noted that during the past three years, three municipalities were converted into cities and a few more are likely to follow suit within the planning period. This may result in a significant decrease in Cavite's annual share from real property taxation and other mandated receivables.

1st District

Urban Population Rural Population

2nd District 3rd District 4th District 5th District 6th District 7th District 0

CAVITE:

168

http://cavite.gov.ph

100k

200k

2,483,241 urban

300k

+

400k

1,447,124 rural

500k

600k

700k

800k

900k

3,930,365 total

169

CALABARZON REGION

CAVITE PROVINCE

7 LEGISLATIVE DISTRICTS

Rosario, Noveleta, Kawit, Cavite City

Bacoor City

Imus City

Dasmarinas City

Silang, Gen. Mariano Alvarez, Carmona

Tanza, Trece Martires, Amadeo, General Trias

Ternate, Maragondon, Magallanes, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, Naic, Indang, Alfonso, Mendez, Tagaytay City

16 MUNICIPALITIES 7 CITIES

143

170

73

97

75

105

113

223

829 BARANGAYS

171

DEMOGRAPHICS Cavite is one of the largest and fastest growing provinces in the country. Based on the 2015 National Census, Cavite has a total population of 3,678,301, the largest not only in Calabarzon (Region IV-A) but in the entire country. It has an average population growth rate of 3.37%, the fastest among the provinces in Calabarzon and much higher than the country's overall growth rate of 1.72%. Some estimates predict the population of Cavite will grow to around 4,408,080 by 2020, an increase in the population of 729,779 or 19.84%. However, the rate of population increase is now declining, after reaching its peak in 2010.

Cavite’s popuation by age and sex groups

As introduced in the essay in the chapter Communities, social relationships exist at scales beyond the immediate physical environment. Cavite province has at least

172

two important scales beyond its own boundary. The first is the migration of rural Filipinos into the metropolitan region searching for jobs and for work. This process increases the population of the metropolitan area and creates new connections between urban and rural networks through family and community ties. The second process is through the training and deployment of Overseas Filipino Worker families, who work outside of the Philippines but who send money home, spurring development and demand for middle income housing. Thus, the spatial development and urbanization of Cavite is driven both by in-migration as well as out-migration. Understanding how these two scales interact with the demand for housing is key to building community resilience at a much more localized scale.

80+ 75 - 79 70 - 74 65 - 69 60 - 64 55 - 59 50 - 54 45 - 49 40 - 44 35 - 39 30 - 34 25 - 29 20 - 24

The larger group is

15 to 19 years old =

9.8%

15 - 19 10 - 14 5-9 1-4 1-

of Cavite’s population

200k

150k

100k

50k

50k

100k

150k

male population

female population

49.71%

50.29%

63%

are “economically productive” =

16 to 64 years old

200k

173

JAPA N-7

126,500

5,90 0

TAIWAN

0 ,90 144

WESTERN ASIA - 1,262,700

NG AP

OR

E

-1

12

,70 0

The number of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who worked abroad at anytime during the period April to September 2018 was estimated at 2.3 million, 55.8% of whom are female. Calabarzon Region, of which Cavite is a part, reported the biggest share of OFWs with 17.9 percent of all OFWs coming from this region.

Cavite province alone is home to 128,843 OFWs. Calabarzon is followed by Central Luzon with 14.3 percent, and the National Capital Region and Ilocos Region each with 9.7%. Fifty percent of all OFWs come from these four regions. One out of four (24.3%) OFWs work in Saudi Arabia, followed by United Arab Emirates (15.7%). Hongkong (6.3%), Kuwait (5.7%), Taiwan (5.5%) and Qatar (5.2%).

NG KO NG HO

OVERSEAS FILIPINO WORKERS

SI

Distribution of OFWs by Occupation

5,200

Managers Professionals

Clerical support Service and sales

,300 LIA - 48

A AUSTR

MALA YSIA 5

Technicians

Agriculture and fishery Craft and tradeswork Machine operations Percentage of total population of OFWS

Elementary occupations

174

OFWs (thousands)

100

0

20

175

EDUCATION Education is recognized as a right of Filipino citizens, and the educational industry is made up of both private and public schools.

Cavite has an abundance of educational opportunities, and a large swath of the population has at least a high school degree.

However, there is a marked drop-off for post-secondary and college education. The City of DasmariĂąas, located in District IV, is described as the province's 'magnet for education,' and the 'University Town of Cavite." District IV is located very close to Manila, where most of the other social and infrastructural amenities are concentrated.

While education is a high priority for the government, most educational institutions remain private. The majority of schools are private at all levels, but the difference is most significant at the secondary level, where 83% of the province's schools are private. Despite the fact that there are significantly more private schools than public schools, there were four times as many students enrolled in public secondary schools than in private ones in 2009-2010.

The relative crowding of public educational institutions brings to light many questions about how future development can increase

176

educational aspirations for the residents of Cavite Province. As new housing subdivisions are built, how can developers create these public amenities at an affordable cost? Trying to identify how many residents a single school can serve, and how these public buildings might create additional value outside of the school year, is one way to think about educational impacts across scales.

The other critical feature of education is in technical and vocational training. Vocational programs are significant for the province and for the economic aspirations of many residents, and is essential 'to promote employability and productivity among individuals who have no access to formal education.' Graduates from these training programs can work locally or overseas as OFWs, but entrepreneurship and enterprisebased training programs are also popular.

Some Local Government Units provide their own vocational programs for free, which are extremely popular. Finding a way to combine this interest with other social and built amenities could create a new way of living in Cavite.

177

178

179

E C O N O M Y

INDUSTRY AGRICULTURE LEISURE

Hotel Governor's Drive Top Tourism Municipalities Tourist Zone Agricultural Area Industrial Park

181

A PLACE OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY Calabarzon region's proximity to Metro Manila has made it a catch basin for urban growth and development. It is home to numerous industrial zones and manufacturing plants which have spurred dramatic migration from rural areas.

The provinceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy is structured into three groups: the primary sector (agriculture), the secondary sector (manufacturing), and the tertiary sector.

The tertiary sector accounts for the largest sectoral employment share at 91.5%, the secondary sector occupies 8.06%, and agriculture garnered the remaining .43%.

While jobs in manufacturing, construction, transportation, trade, and services sectors continue to increase, there is a steady decrease in employment in the agriculture and forestry sectors. While much of this is a result of better employment opportunities in the industry and service sectors, there is also a substantial diminishing in the amount of

central hills lowland alluvial plain Industrialcoastal andplain Agricultural, Residential, Residential Development and Industrial Development

182

agricultural and forestry land available in the province due to rapid urbanization and the construction of housing.

The regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growing economy has also been supported by financial remittances from Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), estimated at more than US $16 billion in 2007. Within Calabarzon, Cavite Province has the largest number of OFWs at around 128,843 (2015). 27.2% are age 45 years old and over, and 65.3% are male. Due to the high level of migrant workers from Cavite, the provincial government provides many social programs for OFWs and their families.

Despite this growth, unemployment rates may rise as industrial establishments close down in-migration from the provinces increases.

Agriculturalupland mountains Tagaytay Urban Development Tourist Zone

183

INDUSTRY Cavite is a highly industrialized province due to wide public and private investment in the manufacturing sector. Investment has been spurred by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA), a government agency in the Philippines attached to the Department of Trade and Industry created to help promote investments in the exportoriented manufacturing industry. Ecozones are major employment centers as well as significant economic engines for the country’s export industry, and PEZA has been providing tax incentives for companies to locate service facilities inside Cavite for nearly thirty years. In 2016, Cavite had established a total of 64 economic zones or industrial estates, with 32 in operation, seven planned, and 25 in development. In addition, there were twenty-one Non-PEZA industrial estates registered.

The current Cavite Province land use plan defines the location of industrial zones for the development of industrial support facilities, with most industrial development occurring in the northeast corner closer to Manila due to better transportation infrastructure. In 2016, Cavite Province had over 1,239 industrial locations, in the sectors of export, logistics services, facilities and IT. The Cavite Economic Zone (CEZ) in the municipality of Rosario and City of Gen. Trias has the highest number of industrial establishments (426), covering 280.6725 hectares.

184

Industrial Estates in Cavite currently occupy 3,078.04 hectares, or 5.31% share of the total built-up area. The majority of these economic zones were established in the urban municipalities of Carmona, Silang, Gen. Trias, Imus, Rosario, Gen. Mariano Alvarez, Bacoor, Tanza and the City of Dasmariñas, although other smaller cities and municipalities are following suit.

Manufacturing and production facilities include food and beverages; textile, wearing apparel and leather industries; wood and wood products, including furniture and fixtures; paper and paper products, including printing and publishing; chemical and chemical products, coil, rubber and plastic products; non-metallic mineral products; basic metal products; fabricated metal products, machinery and equipment; electronic, electrical and telecommunication parts and equipment; agribusiness, livestock and poultry; toys, games and sporting goods.

In addition to large industrial estates, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or call centers have also contributed heavily to the Province's growing economy. “New Wave Cities”, a list of ideal sites for BPO investors, Metro Cavite (Dasmariñas, Imus and Bacoor) was ranked as No.5 in the country based on the availability of an educated labor force and necessary real estate.

185

People’s Technology Park LYL Business Industrial Park Southcoast Industrial Estate Mt View Industrial Complex RS Unitech Manufacturing

INDUSTRIAL PARKS ALONG GOVERNOR’S DRIVE New Cavite Industrial Estate

GOV

ERN

OR’ S

DR

Dasmariñas Techno Park

IV

E

Dalichi Industrial Park

First Cavite Industrial Estate Pasig Industries Gateway Business Park

Cavite Light Industrial Park Centro Manufacturing Corporation

Fravinz Enterprises Inc. 186

187

AGRICULTURE While roughly 50.09% of Cavite’s land area is currently agricultural, the agriculture sector contributes to less than 1% of the region’s economy. The rich soil and wide availability of land shows the province’s vast potential when it comes to further advancing and strengthening its economy through agriculture development. Agriculture covers a wide range of activities including land cultivation, crop production, feeding, breeding and raising livestock, and fishing, all of which are essential both for economic opportunity, employment, and food security.

Despite its significance, there is a consistent downward trend in agricultural land use due to the conversion of productive lands to residential/subdivision development and industrial areas. This is especially concerning given the significant increase in the province’s population, creating a constant and higher demand for food with increasing reliance on imports. To ensure food security for a growing population, attention to agricultural production is essential.

Cavite’s fertile and alluvial soil types and favorable climatic condition make it highly

188

suitable for crop production, which totals roughly 70% of the agricultural area. Crops are categorized into three main types: (1) food crops, (2) industrial/commercial crops and (3) ornamental crops. Rice and corn are the two most essential food crops in the province, with rice being a staple of the Filipino diet and corn used as feed for livestock. Rice production is classified into irrigated and non-irrigated production whereas corn has a seasonal pattern and is generally dependent on the monsoon rains. Vegetables are an important source of additional income for Cavite farmers and can be grown year round. Coconut ranks first among the province's industrial crops, followed by coffee. Banana, pineapple, mango, and papaya are all commercial crops which could show potential for economic growth. High value crops include cut flowers and ornamentals such as orchids, African daisy and anthurium, and are grown in the upland areas of Tagaytay City, Alfonso and other municipalities with relatively cool climate.

189

Food Production

CROPS ARE NO LONGER GROWN IN THE MOST URBANIZED MUNICIPALITIES CLOSEST TO MANILA

Cavite is a traditionally agricultural province that has been industrializing and urbanizing since the late 1980s and early 1990s. As a result of concentrated industrial investment near Manila, agricultural production has become unequal across the province, where some provinces are almost entirely agricultural and others have lost all agricultural land.

Crop production remains an essential industrial activity due to the wide availability of fertile land, demand for eco-tourism, and local food demand.

Agriculture thus has the potential to be a staple of all land use planning in the province.

DISTRICT VII REPRESENTS

61% OF TOTAL AGRICULTURAL

27% FOOD CROPS

food crops

AREA IN CAVITE PROVINCE

rice vegetables corn and root crops

43%

73%

AGRICULTURAL AREA

INDUSTRIAL CROPS

commercial crops

coconut coffee banana sugarcane pineapple mango other 5

10

15

planted area (thousands of hectares)

190

191

CROP DIVERSITY ACROSS CAVITE Different types of crops are grown along the Cavite transect. Lowland areas predominately crow food crops such as corn and rice; upland areas grow fruits and ornamentals. Domestic livestock production can be found throughout.

Fisheries Cavite City, Rosario, Bacoor, Naic, Ternate

Sineguelasan Fishport Bacoor

Meat-Processing Plant Imus City

Rice Paddy

Mango Tree

Greenhouse for Cut-Flowers Silang

Corn Stalk

Banana Trees

Pineapple Plants

Root Vegetables

Coconut Trees

Coffee Plant

192

coastal plain

lowland alluvial plain

central hills

upland mountains

193

LEISURE "A province not constrained with living in the past, Cavite teems with natural resources and fantastic landscapes. It is home to Tagaytay City, the Philippinesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; second summer capital, next to Baguio City. The accessing highway offers a breathtaking sight of the world-famous Taal formation, a crater within an island within a lake. Coconut groves dot the ridges of Tagaytay and classy accommodations give the visiting tourists the pleasures of relaxation, and at the same time, wide opportunities to enjoy the magnificent view of Taal.

Furthermore, Cavite is a land blessed with galore of natural wonders, making it gleaming and a perfect place for a memorable ecoholiday. It is a picturesque, scenic province providing a place conducive for both business and leisure. The province has some of its most superb mountains, cave and falls which can truly fascinate its numerous visitors.

Natural wonders in Cavite are mostly found in the upland areas. Meanwhile a number of historical and religious sites are also located in the province, which have defined significant events and have illustrated human creativity and cultural traditions. Each site tells its own distinctive story. Some of these sites are sacred and some are commemorating battlefields.

More importantly, all of these places have contributed a sense of time, identity, and place to our understanding of Cavite as a whole."

- Provincial Development and Physical Framework Plan 2010 - 2020 Tagaytay Tourism Zone 194

195

LEISURE ACROSS THE PROVINCE

Wind Residences Nasugbu Highway, Tagaytay

Paniman Beach Ternate

Mt. Pico de Loro Maragondon

Balite Falls Amadeo

Sherwood Hills Golf Course Trece Martires

Gourmet Farms Silang

Tagaytay Ridge Tagaytay

Paniman Beach Ternate

Coco Valley Richnez Waterpark Paliparan Road, DasmariĂąas

Lake Taal

The Ternate - Corregidor Tourist Zone: The Naic-Maragondon Area is popular because of the presence of worldclass beach resorts and historical attractions Kawit - Cavite City Tourist Zone: Cavite City includes the rich historical legacies of the CaviteĂąo role in the fight for Philippine Independence.

196

coastal plain

Metro Tagaytay Tourist Node: The municipalities of Silang, Alfonso, Mendez, Amadeo, Indang, Magallanes, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo (Bailen), Maragondon, Ternate and Tagaytay City. are famous for their natural tourist attractions including lake Taal and numerous waterfalls and springs. These natural elements are perfect for meditating, sightseeing, picnicking and other countryside activities due to their pleasant climate.

lowland alluvial plain

central hills

upland mountains

coastal197plain

1

RETAIL SPACE While mixed-use streetscapes and small shops are traditionally more common in the rural areas, high termperatures and humidity have made indoor malls an increasingly common feature of the rural-urban landscape.

2

The cooler temperatures of the Upland Mountains and Central Hills areas allow for some limited outdoor shopping and leisure space

3

Indoor shopping provides respite from the heat

1

SM Mall of Asia Seaside Blvd, 123, Pasay, 1300 Metro Manila, Philippines

2

Acienda Outlet Emilio Aguinaldo Highway Silang, Cavite, Philippines

3

Street V. Toledo Street Silang, Cavite, Philippines

Retail Conditioned / Leisure Space Parking

0 198

100 m 199

SETTLEMENTS

HISTORIC TOWN LINEAR DEVELOPMENT PLANNED ESTATE

Minor Roads Major Roads Proposed Highway Building 201

HOUSING CHOICE FOR A GROWING PROVINCE â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Province offers an excellent choice for developing a world class suburb. Located on the southern side of Metro Manila, Cavite...has seen a near doubling of its population in the last seven years, truly a rapid growth by any standards. With a current population of 3.68 million, it is projected that Cavite would have about 4.41 million residents by 2020. It is becoming more and more attractive province to which people migrate.

It is therefore necessary that this growth happens in a planned manner to prevent the usual problems associated with uncontrolled sprawl and unmanaged urban development...â&#x20AC;?

-Cavite Province Climate Change Action Plan, 2016

As Cavite continues to attract young and old, skilled and unskilled workers, urbanites and people from the provinces, housing demand is sure to increase. While housing estates are one way in which this demand is being met, other types of residential construction also exist. These include the historic towns, which feature elements from the Spanish colonial period and are bustling urban centers today, to the linear developments which line roadways across the entire province. Each of these residential typologies has a unique

202

character which supports or restricts certain types of social and economic interaction.

It is important to note that there are hundreds of thousands of people in Cavite and the Metro Manila area who live in informal settlements. While their housing needs are just as important, the design challenges and opportunities they face are not represented in this book.

203

HISTORIC TOWN The historic towns of Cavite are the result of settlement patterns driven by the Spanish Colonial "Laws of the Indies." These small towns have developed into some of the most highly urbanized and bustling urban centers, featuring a wide variety of medium-density mixed uses as well as important public infrastructure.

Jollibee

These towns are also oriented in a grid system, resulting in circulation patterns with short blocks and numerous intersections.

Traffic can be heavy as these numerous intersections result in frequent slowdowns.

Drug Store

Community Center

Our Lady of Candelaria Parish Church

Silang Municipal Hall

Jeepney Stand

PAMAHALAANG BAYAN SILANG CAVITE

J&C LUCKY 99 STORE

204

South Star Drug

mercury drug

JEEPNEY

NAKASISIGURO GAMOT AY LAGING BAGO

205

206

207

LINEAR DEVELOPMENT The linear developments of Cavite follow the major and minor road network and are generally surrounded with abundant open space and. These small developments have a variety of uses, from agricultural to small retail, eco-tourism and restaurant destinations, and even housing. Many of the residential plots also include agricultural land behind the home. While these types of developments are still highly visible in the rural areas of the province, those located

Market Stalls

208

in more urbanized settings have been often swallowed by recently constructed housing estates. While there is only one major circulation route through the development, these types of settlements concentrate housing and commercial use along transportation arteries while preserving open space, a concept that could be worth revisiting for future development in other forms.

Plant Shop

Warehouse

Convenience Store

Ceramics Shop

Private Home

209

210

211

PLANNED ESTATE Planned estates are one of the most ubiquitous contemporary forms of housing available in Cavite. Differing sharply from the mixed-use and lively urban centers of historic towns and lacking the street life of the linear developments, these planned estates have been developed to create as much mass housing as possible.

The regulation of the construction and selling of lots and houses in a subdivision is regulated by the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB). In 2016 alone,

Residential Unit

212

HLURB issued 73 permits for a total of 36,164 lots and housing units. These types of developments are concentrated in the City of General Trias (10,069 units), City of Imus (7,059), and City of Trece Martires (4,563).

While these types of estates are important for addressing the dramatic housing backlog in the province, their monotony and isolation can often result in a lack of individuality, safety, and feelings of community within each subdivision.

Open Space

213

214

215

P R O P O S A L 216

CONCEPT URBAN BANDS ECO-CORRIDORS

Urban Band Ecological Corridor

217

CAVITE PROVINCE PLAN: EXISTING GROWTH ZONES Concentric in relation to Metro Manila

CONCEPT

First Growth Triangle: La Llave de Manila Second Growth Triangle: Cavite Nuevo

“The metropolis is no longer a city, it is a region, and can be conceived only as a vast urban landscape.... Can such an urban landscape be conceived as a whole, can it be designed so as to produce a mental image?”

Third Growth Triangle: Metro Tagaytay

- Hans Blumenfeld, “The Scale of Civic Design”

The current pattern of dispersed urbanism in Cavite is reflective of the lack of a cohesive vision plan for the province. The continued development of the province and the consequences of climate change affirm the need for an integrated development strategy which combines quality housing, socioeconomic development, and environmental management. The absence of such a vision increases exposure of housing and residents to social and environmental risks which can be minimized through the design of holistic systems and settlements. While the pattern of dispersed urbanism may continue, it can also happen in a more intentional way.

The proposed plan conceives the entire province as an urban-ecological entity, combining rural lands and urbanized areas in synergy so that each can benefit from the other and function as a single ruralurban system. This new vision plan for the

218

province operates on the regional scale, aspiring to create a self-sustained province that no longer relies heavily on Manila as a center of employment, education, shopping and culture. It seeks to replace the current development zones organized as three concentric rings radiating from manila outwards with a corridor structure that organizes development along a north-south set of bands intertwined with landscape corridors between the upland mountain of Tagaytay and the coastal plain of Cavite City.

Cavite Province has a well-defined silhouette, a legible landscape which can help us read its form. While the silhouette is easily legible from afar, its shape is less obvious on the ground. Despite the fact that these shifts between climatic zones cannot be seen when walking down the street, design can help us to understand the context of our environment by reflecting ecological processes at a much smaller scale. Near

NEW VISION PLAN: URBAN BANDS AND ECO-CORRIDORS Expand existing connections and strengthen connections between upland mountains and coastal plain

Urban Band

Eco-Corridor

219

Ecological Zones

the coast, houses are on stilts, the lowland plains surrounded by wide swaths of rice and corn fields, and the central hills, dotted with plantations of local crops for export as well as local consumption. We can read and design the metropolis through the landscape at the scale of the province and beyond.

The plan responds to and takes advantage of the natural features of the province - a series of river creeks traversing from high ground to the ocean, to propose a new tri-part zoning system derived from eastwest cross sections along the changing altitude of the province. This zoning seeks to distribute densities and activities in a way that urbanized areas benefit from proximity to rural lands and the open space

areas function to maintain natural flows of water and minimize risk. Open spaces of the current rural lands are maintained for production (agriculture) and in areas that they play a key environmental role to minimize risk and preserve the natural patterns and characteristics of the landscape (Z3). Urban development occurs around existing and planned infrastructure with consideration of natural elements of the landscape, topography, geological conditions, soil, existing communities and other (Z1).

A hybrid of Z1 and Z3 promotes low to medium density housing development that is connected to urban amenities as well as open space (Z2).

The particular functionality of each zone is differentiated by its relative location within the four distinct ecological zones of the province.

SECTION A-Aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

SECTION B-Bâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

EXISTING

PROPOSED

Existing development in Cavite does not follow a logic in harmony with the natural environment. Rather, residential

A new rural-urbanism for Cavite province is more selective about which areas receive the bulk of development. Rather than

construction happens in an ad hoc fashion depending upon the availability of land and proximity to Manila. As a result,

concentrating density next to Manila, a plan for rural-urbanism leaves areas vulnerable to environmental hazards such as

relationships with the natural environment and essential ecological systems lose their functionality. This is most apparent in

flooding (Z1) open, consolidates high density development along transportation corridors (Z3), and proposes new residential

the coastal zone, where relative proximity to Manila has driven up land values and spurred the conversion of agricultural and

and commercial typologies in the areas in between (Z2).

coastal areas into residential and commercial development. This has also made structures in this zone highly susceptible to environmental hazards such as flooding, storm surge, and tsunamis.

220

221

EXISTING

222

PROPOSED

223

Z1

RURAL-URBANISM RURAL-URBAN DEVELOPMENT

CENTRAL HILLS

Zones Z1, Z2, Z3 represent and define three different areas in terms of land use, programs, allowed building footprint and environmental performance.

Z1 defines areas for future development around existing and proposed infrastructure and existing linear settlement patterns. It is designated as a dense mixed-use area

Z2

Z2 is a flexible transition zone between the dense urbanized Z1 and the open landscape of Z3. The Z2 area incorporates many of the existing housing estates and allows further control low density development emphasizing shared and public programs to serve and connect scattered housing clusters

Z3 Transportation Artery High density residential

Park

Z3 delineates an open space area to be

Basketball Court

preserved for agricultural, recreational,

Planned Estate

and environmental reasons. It may

Light Industrial

include wetlands and landslide safety zones around rivers as well as the facilitation and maintenance of fields and

Ecotourism Hotel

crops for industrial and tourism purposes

Agricultural Fields CENTRAL HILLS

Flood Zone 224

225

URBAN BANDS:

ENABLING STRONGER CROSS-PROVINCE CONNECTIONS

The rural-urban concept relies on strong environmental as well as economic and social functionality. Cavite can only be a vibrant province if its residential, commercial, and industrial development are well connected to the rest of the province and beyond. While current infrastructure planning continues to focus on connections to Manila, this concept emphasizes connections throughout the province as the primary concern for sustainable growth.

C2 C1

As one of the key features of resilient systems is redundancy, multiple transportation arteries across the province are necessary.

Primary connections run North-South but are supported by a larger number of secondary East-West connections than what currently exists. A tertiary road network at the municipal level can also be supported by development requirements to extend tertiary road networks to their secondary and primary axes.

B2

A

B1

Development Band A National Highways B Primary Road Network C Secondary Road Network

226

*Diagramatic concept - exact location of land use corridors not shown

227

NATIONAL HIGHWAY A1 CALAx

A2 CALAx TOLL GATE

228

229

Proposed: Increase FAR and building envelope

B - PRIMARY ROAD

C - SECONDARY ROAD

B1 EXPANDING EXISTING ROADS (DEVELOPMENT WITH Z1)

C1 EAST-WEST CROSSROADS THROUGH Z2 AND Z3

18m

B2 PRIMARY ROAD BETWEEN URBAN BAND (Z1) AND LOW DENSITY OPEN SPACE AREA (Z2)

15m

230

6-8m

C2 PERVIOUS COMPRESSED DIRT ROADS FOR AGRICUTLRUAL AND RECREATIONAL PURPOSES (Z3)

5m

231

Development Band National Highways

coastal plain

232

Equitable Connectivity The future road network treats the four ecological zones of Cavite equally in terms of development priority. While currently only the areas closest

Primary Road Network

to Manila have strong transportation connectivity, a rural-urban concept

Secondary Road Network

emphasizes connectivity equally amongst the different zones.

lowland alluvial plain

central hills

*Diagramatic concept - exact location of land use corridors not shown

upland mountains

233

ECO-CORRIDORS:

CREATING AND PRESERVING FUNCTIONAL OPEN SPACE

While economic and social activity is essential to improve the lives and livelihoods of residents in Cavite province, it is imperative to give space to environmental and ecological functionality in any development strategy. This does not simply mean creating parks or planting trees, but instead respect and utilize the underlying ecological systems present in the landscape.

Cavite's multiple watersheds provide a useful organizational tool for creating a hierarchy of ecological corridors that follow the river's movement from Tagaytay in the north all the way into Manila bay. Preserving open space around these dynamic water bodies not only creates important corridors for wildlife habitat, but also increases access for residents to this essential asset. Recognizing the importance of these corridors side by side to the urban arteries creates the novel nexus of rural and urban which is the core component of a rural urban strategy and can help the province be more resilient in the face of environmental hazard.

Rivers and Water Bodies Eco-corridor

234

*Diagramatic concept - exact location of land use corridors not shown

235

coastal plain

lowland alluvial plain

central hills

upland mountains

Dynamic Ecologies Watersheds and their correspdonding rivers and streams are dynamic entities which shape the landscapes they flow through. From the upland areas to the coastal plains, the size and depth of the river changes. As a result, the Z3 zone must also change to incoporate different hazards, Rivers and Water Bodies

expecially flooding and landslide risks

Rivers and Water Bodies Eco-corridor

236

*Diagramatic concept - exact location of watershed not shown

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END NOTES

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org/10.1007/s10464-007-9156-6.

Image credits: All images are property of the MIT Workshop team unless otherwise noted: Stratton Coffman Marlena Fauer Mengqi He Mengfu Kuo Rachel Li-Jiang Luo Kelly Leilani Main Nof Nathansohn Helena Rong Prof. Rafi Segal Zhifei Xu Nitzan Zilberman 243

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