The Mall of Asia complex is now a thriving integrated lifestyle development.
How has the pandemic changed the metropolis and city living? There are numerous images of a postpandemic urban environment.
On one hand, we have the more populist and egalitarian views of reimagined downtowns and 15-minute cities with walkable, car-free streets—a vision being pursued in many European cities. A reorientation of the city to the outdoors where roads are reclaimed from private automobiles and outdoor places are created to entice people to engage the city again—in the hope of resuscitating the social and economic vibrancy of downtowns amid the relentless and likely long-term threat of COVID-19.
On the other hand, we also hear of bold plans such as Jeff Bezos’ “mixed-use business park” in space, Elon Musk’s colonization of Mars, and Facebook creating virtual worlds in the Metaverse—ideas that provoke images of earlier colonizations of new territories to fuel the expansion of capital.
These are two approaches that spring from a common desire to confront the current existential crisis of a society beset by plague and climate change. The former tries to fix what’s wrong with our cities, while the latter seeks to escape from it. Both are drawn from the same innate and ancient yearning of humanity to shape our experienced space into an ideal realm—a utopia that is unencumbered by our present reality, or at a minimum, a utopia that has solved current reality’s ills.
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Nuvali, in Laguna, planned in the early 1990s and launched nearly two decades later, is a noteworthy example of new town development in the Philippines.
The appeal of the fringe
This yearning is no less manifested in the trends we have witnessed in the local property sector in the past several months. Locally, peri-urban areas have seen renewed appeal for the property market due to the constraints of in-city living amid the pandemic. As rents and property values in downtown areas decreased and vacancies increased, property development outside of the metropolis took up some of the slack by attracting buyers who seek less congested, healthier settings. The appeal of the fringe was boosted by several road infrastructure projects from the metropolis to the hinterlands, along with an apparent counter migration to the suburbs (or even to the provinces) due to hybridized and flexible work arrangements.
Large-scale, mixed-use estates, more universally known as new towns, pioneer development in the hinterlands, creating new territories for living and investment. Estates have been effective in channeling surplus capital into future urban space, generating opportunities for investment while producing socioeconomic infrastructure necessary to seed such future spaces (roads, utilities, schools, recreation areas). With these, the generation of jobs and places of consumption (e.g., shopping centers) follow. Nuvali, in Laguna, planned in the early 1990s and launched nearly two decades later, is a noteworthy example of new town development in the Philippines. Launched as an eco-city in 2009, its property values have soared fourfold, with buyers banking on its implicit promise as the next Makati.
