Public spaces have been both a love and an irk in my advocacy for improving Philippine urban spaces. A love, because it embodies equity, distributive justice, and shared rights, and an irk, because many Filipinos disrespect the notion of what “public” means, and just about everything it embodies–because of a sense of entitlement–while so many areas in the rest of the world put public spaces on a pedestal. So this post is going to be a listing of how public spaces are mentioned in our Philippine laws, what the New Urban Agenda says about them, and how I think we should move forward on improving our spaces.
Jean Palma 