OUR cities and towns suffer from the lack of proper urban planning and design. This leads to congestion, lack of access to potable water and proper sanitation, lack of access to mobility and transportation, safety hazards such as fire and flooding, and other urban problems. Metro Manila, despite producing one-third of the national gross domestic product (GDP), succumbs to these urban problems such that its competitiveness rank way below its Asian neighbors. According to the Oxford Economics Global Cities Index 2026, Metro Manila ranks 174th among 1,000 cities worldwide selected for the survey. While there is no question as to the importance of Metro Manila as the prime city in the Philippines, it is important to view this in the prism of global cities’ competitiveness. As Metro Manila lags in competitiveness, the necessary consequence of this tragic reality means that the Philippines as a country will continue to drop down in the list of the world’s most competitive cities.
There are some bright spots though which give hope to the possible urban renewal of our beloved capital. In terms of urban planning and design, the Bonifacio Global City (BGC) stands tall among all other urban developments in the entire country. When BGC was still in its inception, naysayers and unbelievers argued that such ambitious plan would never compete with the adjoining Ayala central business district. It was Manny V. Pangilinan and his team at Metro Pacific who threw his full faith in the potential of the former Fort Bonifacio in its transformation from a military reservation to a vibrant business district. If not for Mr. Pangilinan, our country would have left with no central business district as beautiful and as prosperous as the BGC. It is so successful that all other city or town dreaming to join the league of the world’s most beautiful cities, will look up to BGC as its template of development.
Certainly, the BGC development and success has its imperfections. But it cannot be disputed that it serves as the template for development in the Philippine cities that all local government and every Filipino will wish on their own cities and municipalities. For one, BGC proved in its nascent history how a massive real estate development can be resilient in the face of a global financial crisis to emerge eventually as the model for other urban developments of such scale.
The key to the success of BGC lies on the beauty of its vision and the resiliency of its execution. In real terms, the adoption of modern urban planning innovation in the masterplan of Bonifacio Global City proved to be its enduring strength and resilience over the years. When Sean Chiao, the principal urban designer of BGC at its foundational stage, adopted the gross plot ratio (GPR) or the gross floor area (GFA) ratio in its detailed masterplan, he introduced a modern concept that all city or town mayors in the Philippines must understand and embrace to make every city or town in the nation as competitive as any other in the world.
Currently, Philippine urban planning and zoning laws require merely the adoption of the Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP). Despite its adoption, urban sprawl continues to burden and stunt the growth of Philippine cities and towns. Worse, many LGUs craft their CLUPs merely to comply with the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) and not for honest-to-goodness master planning. Because of this, the CLUPs submitted are mostly lacking in rigor. Worse, they are merely a cut-and-paste version of other CLUPs.
Because CLUPs limit the masterplan to land use, they do not contain the detailed plan for the density which the GPR requires. The CLUP is important in the determination of land uses such as residential, commercial, industrial or institutional. Basically, the CLUP answers the question of what can be built on the specific parcel of land. On the other hand, the GPR goes beyond the land use by including the determination of density in the development. Simply put, the GPR or GFA system answers the question of how much can be built in a specific parcel of land. Determining both the land use and the density of development in a specific parcel of land allows better planning both in the infrastructure and utility planning as well as in human interaction.
By following the GPR system, the allocation of density can be done with more rigor and depth. Consequently, urban infrastructure can be built where they are most needed at the capacity that the human population and activity requires. By breaking each parcel of land into smaller planning units as floor area ratio (FAR) requires, there is much clarity and specificity in the human activity that is expected to happen in every given space. The size of water pipes, electrical loads and cables, the volume of water and sewer, the human traffic that would have to be moved, the kind of human activity that is expected to happen in every single square meter of land or building can be predicted and met from the very beginning of the development. Thus, this would allow transport planners to assign higher density GPR to land developments nearer to the mass transport system such as train or subway stations or other transit-oriented development (TOD). The match between population density and infrastructure capacity can be better done if we include GPR in our urban planning activities. The GPR system requires lower density development in environmentally constrained locations. The availability of geohazard maps make planning in this manner much easier. Greater density will be directed toward locations capable of supporting bigger human population and activities.
However, GPR is not a standalone system. It works best in complement with controls for building height, setbacks and easements, lot coverage, street frontage, open spaces and heritage and environmental protection. The GPR provides architectural flexibility through the crafting of detailed design restrictions.
Our government urban planners can institutionalize the adoption of the GPR and GFA system of zoning regulation in addition to CLUP. It makes urban planning more suited and more coordinated with all aspects of urban development and urban governance.
