Urbanization Process and the Changing - 16 Pages

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191Environment & Urbanization Copyright 2007 International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).Vol 19(1): 191206. DOI: 10.1177/0956247807076782 www.sagepublications.com

Urbanization process and the changing agricultural landscape pattern in the urban fringe of Metro Manila, Philippines

ISIDORO R MALAQUE III and MAKOTO YOKOHARI

ABSTRACT This paper discusses physical changes in the urban fringe agricultural landscape of Metro Manila and the socioeconomic factors and other pressures underlying these changes. In 1982, agricultural land use dominated in both of the two study areas, but the area under cultivation had decreased by 1997. The changing pattern in the northwest study area was one of phased transition towards a more urban land use. In contrast, in the southeast study area, there was a sudden change from an agricultural to an urban landscape. The paper explores the reasons for this difference and recommends the conservation of green open spaces through the adoption of an ecological planning approach involving a mixture of urban and agricultural land uses.

KEYWORDS aerial photographs / agricultural lands / changing patterns / Metro Manila / urban fringe

I. INTRODUCTION

In Metro Manila, as in many other centres, the urbanization process has caused constant physical change in the urban fringe landscape, resulting in a mix of urban and agricultural land uses. The physical patterns that are created are the result of social, economic and political conditions and processes. As part of this process, agricultural lands in the peripheral provinces have been subjected to urban pressures. Metro Manila has experienced net migration to the adjoining province of Cavite, with an increase from 24,406 between 1975 and 1980 to 29,970 between 1985 and 1990. In conjunction with this, Cavites population increased rapidly from 771,320 (in 1980) to 1,610,324 (in 1995). Its recent growth rate has been 6.47 per cent and the population density is 1,251 persons per hectare.(1) Region IV, where Cavite province is located, ranked fi rst in the country in terms of the number of applications for land use conversion between 1988 and 2000. There were 753 applications, 30 per cent of the total number for the whole country. Of these, 696 were approved, covering a total land area of 14,422 hectares.(2) Rapid land use conversions, which started in the 1990s, resulted in urban fringe landscapes featuring idle agricultural land because of residential sub-division lots that remained unsold and the abandonment of agricultural lands.

Isidoro R Malaque III is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of the Philippines in Mindanao, Philippines.

Address: e-mail: [email protected]

Makoto Yokohari is a Professor at the Group of Natural Environment Studies, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

Address: e-mail: [email protected]

1. Unpublished secondary data obtained from the National Statistics Offi ce during the authors research in 20002003.

2. Unpublished secondary data obtained from the Centre for Land Use Policy Planning and ImplementationI Secretariat, Department of Agrarian Reform during the authors research in 20002003.

E N V I R O N M E N T & U R B A N I Z AT I O N Vol 19 No 1 April 2007

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a. Spatial growth of Metro Manila

Manila, a primate city even in the pre-colonial era, has continued to expand geographically to reach its present metropolitan status.(3) The consolidation into a metropolitan region started in the 1940s with the chartering of the municipalities of Quezon and Pasay and their inclusion into the urbanized zone of the city of Manila. The present metropolitan arrangement was based on the passage of the Republic Act 7924 in 1995, creating the Metro Manila Development Authority. This defi ned Metro Manila, which is composed of 17 cities and municipalities, as a special development and administrative region.

As the national capital and the centre of trade and governance, Manila has long attracted migrants from all over the country. The Philippine Internal Migration Data Set, available only for three fi ve-year periods: 19701975, 19751980 and 19851990, indicates that Bicol, Eastern Visayas, Western Visayas and Ilocos were the top sources of migrants to Metro Manila. Migration data suggest that the poorer a region is, the more migrants it sends to Metro Manila. Between 1985 and 1990, net migration from Metro Manila to the nearby provinces, together known as CALABARZON,(4) was 111,515 (184,039 gross) with a net migration rate of 16.2 per cent (26.8 gross).(5) It was therefore considered that CALABARZON would be key to migration management in Metro Manila.

b. The urbanization process in the urban fringe

Economic development has, in general, been the major force behind changes in the urban fringe areas. Urbanization in the fringe of regional cities, as presented by Bryant and colleagues,(6) is characterized by a high proportion of non-farm inhabitants, some of whom have migrated from other regions and some of whom have moved from the urban area.

These non-farm elements create a range of pressures that affect the pattern of agricultural lands. These impacts have been identifi ed by Pond and Yeates(7) as direct when land is taken out of agriculture and built on to add to the existing stock of urban land; as indirect visible when land beyond the contiguous urban built-up area is used to serve the urban areas; and as indirect less visible when land in transition can be identifi ed through the intentions of the owners.(8) Pond and Yeates(9) further estimated these direct and indirect impacts of urbanization in the fringe, and used their ratio as an indicator of the stage of urbanization.

The process of land use conversion in Metro Manilas extended metro-politan region:

represents a political process in two senses: fi rst, policy choices are made relating to the use of land that refl ect a particular set of development priorities; and second, the facilitation of conversion involves the use of political power relations to circumvent certain regulations.(10)

These trends are clear at the national, local and personal levels, which are different but interconnected in the everyday political activity in the urbanizing areas. Currently, local land use planning and zoning regula-tions in the Philippines are mostly in favour of built-up land uses rather than preservation for agricultural purposes. Ballesteros, of the Philippine

3. Reyes, Marqueza C L (1998), Spatial structure of Metro Manila: genesis, growth and development, Philippine Planning Journal Vol 29/30,No 2/1, AprilOctober, pages 134.

4. This refers to the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon.

5. National Statistics Offi ce migration data set, from Nakanishi, Toru (2002), Migration and environmental issues in economic development, in Tatsuo Ohmachi and Emerlinda R Roman (editors), Metro Manila: In Search of a Sustainable Future, Impact Analysis of Metropolitan Policies for Development and Environmental Conservation, University of the Philippine Press, Manila, pages 6169.

6. Bryant, C R, L H Russwurm and A G McLellan (1982), The Citys Countryside: Land and its Management in the RuralUrban Fringe, Longman, London, 249 pages.

7. Pond, Bruce and Maurice Yeates (1993), Rural/urban land conversion I: estimating the direct and indirect impacts, Urban Geography Vol 14, No 4, pages 323347.

8. Pond, Bruce, and Maurice Yeates (1994), Rural/urban land conversion II: identifying land in transition to urban use, Urban Geography Vol 15, No 1, pages 2544.

9. Pond, Bruce, and Maurice Yeates (1994), Rural/urban land conversion III: a technical note on leading indicators of urban land development, Urban Geography Vol 15, No 3, pages 207222.

10. Kelly, Philip F (1998), The politics of urbanrural relations: land use conversion in the Philippines, Environment & Urbanization Vol 10, No 1, April, pages 3554.


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Institute for Development Studies,(11) says that local government units prefer non-agricultural land uses for example, commercial uses because they generate higher income taxes. Performance indicators are based on this kind of economic standard.

In 1990, the CALABARZON regional project was launched to pro-mote export-oriented industrialization in the periphery of Metro Manila. It included seven major components, four of which (urban development, agriculture, rural development and environmental management) were, according to McAndrew, more diffused and less capital intensive.(12) Various schemes provided restrictions and incentives for industries to be located outside of Metro Manila or in depressed areas. These schemes included: encouragement by the Ramos administration in 1992 of the dis-persal of industries into the countryside;(13) policies redirecting the fl ow of migrants away from Metro Manila; and the launching of the National Industrial Estate Programme that created the Canlubang Estate project in Laguna. The result of such policy schemes was the conversion of agricultural lands. In the peripheral provinces of Metro Manila, the con-version of farmland into industrial estates and residential sub-divisions was widespread, and in many instances agricultural production was stopped and tenant farmers displaced while owners speculated on the future sale of the land.(14) On the other hand, there were also policy schemes aimed at the retention of the rural population, including agrarian land reform efforts, rural housing programmes and integrated rural agri-cultural development schemes to promote agriculture. But, according to David:

because of uncertainties about the land reform programme, landowners hesitate to make long-term investments. They prefer to convert land use to non-agricultural purposes, thereby avoiding the land reform programme.(15)

c. The objectives of this study in the context of the literature

This paper discusses physical changes in two study areas in the urban fringe agricultural landscape of Metro Manila, and the socioeconomic factors and other pressures underlying these changes. The following sections describe earlier work on the topic that is relevant to this research and indicate how the present paper builds on that work.

Agricultural landscape ecological processes. Ecological planning has been defi ned as the use of biophysical and sociocultural infor-mation to suggest opportunities and constraints for decision-making about the use of the landscape.(16) When the principle of landscape ecology is applied to broad-scale environmental studies, it answers the demand for the scientifi c underpinnings of managing large areas and incorporating the consequences of spatial heterogeneity into land management decisions.(17) Ecological strategies,(18) used for landscape design and planning, can be applied to all economic and social activities that play a role in the interaction between society and its environment. An understanding of the process whereby human beings alter landscape patterns(19) serves as a starting point for altering plans and implementing policies. Several studies have related physical changes in the landscape to other factors. For example, in a small catchment of the northern Loess Plateau in China, land use change was studied through the interpretation of aerial

11. Personal communication with M M Ballesteros, researcher, Philippine Institute for Development Studies,30 August 2002.

12. McAndrew, John P (1996), Urban Usurpation: From Friar Estates to Industrial Estates in a Philippine Hinterland, Ateneo de Manila University Press, Manila, 212 pages.

13. Ochoa, Cecilia Luz (1999), The rural sector and the Ramos administration, Kasarinlan Vol 14, No 3/4, pages 165172.

15. David, Cristina C (1999), Constraints to food security: the Philippine case, Journal of Philippine DevelopmentVol XXVI, No 2-a, page 30.

16. Steiner, Frederick (1991), The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning, McGraw-Hill, New York, 365 pages.

17. Turner, Monica G, Robert H Gardner and Robert V ONeill (2001), Landscape Ecology in Theory and Practice: Pattern and Process, Springer-Verlag, New York, 401 pages.

18. Tjallingii, Sybrand (1996), Ecological Conditions: Strategies and Structures in Environmental Planning, IBNDLO, Wageningen,320 pages.

19. Forman, Richard T T (1995), Land Mosaics: The Ecology of Landscape and Region, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 652 pages.

14. Kelly, Philip F (2000), Landscape of Globalization: Human Geographies of Economic Change in the Philippines, Routledge, London, 189 pages.


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photographs for 1975 and 1997, land use patterns were studied through various metrics, and changes in land use structure were analyzed in terms of the infl uence of land use policy.(20)

Two other studies analyzing the process of human-induced landscape transformation were conducted in a micro watershed in the mid-elevation zone of the central Himalayas in India(21) and in a small watershed in the central region of Honduras.(22) Both studies concluded that by integrat-ing information about the physical attributes of the landscape and their changes over time with information about demographic, legal and policy changes, a cause and effect pattern could be formulated.

The extension and intensifi cation of agriculture in Rostrup, Denmark,(23) has also been studied. Changes in farm type and land use between 1973 and 1995 were analyzed and this was supplemented by the results of a questionnaire survey among farmers in the study area in 1997 to investi-gate the forces of landscape change at the local level.

Another case study from Ylane, in southwest Finland,(24) illustrates that agriculture is the dominant land use type in the area and that it in-creased steadily from 48 per cent to 56 per cent between 1958 and 1997. It was expected that the intensifi cation of agriculture would result in homogeneity of the landscape. To investigate this, patterns of change in two Norwegian agricultural landscapes were analyzed and compared using agricultural statistics and aerial photographs.(25) One was a typical intensively cultivated fl at area in Rekkestad, Ostfold, and one was a trad-itional mountain farm landscape in Hjartdal, Telemark. It was found that further intensifi cation of intensively managed landscapes has led to an increasingly homogenous, large-scale landscape featuring fewer bound-aries. In contrast, reduced management in the mountain farm system resulted in an increasingly heterogeneous, small-scale landscape.

A study of the changing face of a Czech rural landscape(26) indicated that cultural landscapes are constantly developing, and that changes depend on social, economic and political conditions.

Identifi cation of the changes in landscape structures. According to Ohmachi, environmental degradation in Metro Manila is due to population concentration and the serious lack of, or delay in, infrastructure developments.(27) Urbanization has caused the loss of green space, as discussed by Takeuchi,(28) who referred to the studies of Moriwake and colleagues(29) and Murakami and colleagues(30) on the changes of landscape structures in Metro Manila. These papers suggested that policies aimed at creating green spaces in the city core and conserving green spaces in the outer suburbs (the remaining woodlands and agricultural lands) should be enforced because of their potential ecological function in absorbing pressures brought about by urbanization. Moriwake and colleagues(31) determined the characteristics of urban green spaces in major land use types by performing a fi eld vegetation survey, focusing on vertical struc-ture and species composition of trees. The green cover ratio is used as an indicator of the spatial quantity of greenery. In low-density residential areas and parks, the ratio was found to exceed 20 per cent in most of the sample sites. However, the ratio was less than 10 per cent in high-density residential areas and in business and commercial areas. In urbanrural mixed areas, the ratio was also small, since only the tree crown cover was being assessed and grasslands were not included. Agricultural lands have few trees, and trees in new residential areas are still fairly young. Murakami and colleagues(32) found that landscape features in Metro

20. Chen, Liding, Jun Wang, Bojie Fu and Yang Qiu (2001), Land use change in a small catchment of northern Loess Plateau, China, Agriculture, Ecosystems & EnvironmentVol 86, No 2, pages 163172.

21. Rao, K S and Rekha Pant (2001), Land use dynamics and landscape change pattern in a typical micro watershed in the mid-elevation zone of central Himalaya, India, Agriculture, Ecosystems & EnvironmentVol 86, No 2, pages 113124.

22. Kammerbauer, Johann and Carlos Ardon (1999), Land use dynamics and landscape change pattern in a typical watershed in the hillside region of central Honduras, Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment Vol 75, No 1, pages 93100.

23. Kristensen, S P (1999), Agricultural land use and landscape changes in Rostrup, Denmark: process of intensifi cation and extensifi cation, Landscape and Urban Planning Vol 46, No 1, pages 117123.

24. Hietala-Koivu, R (1999), Agricultural landscape change: a case study in Ylane, southwest Finland, Landscape and Urban Planning Vol 46,No 1, pages 103108.

25. Fjellstad, W J and W E Dramstad (1999), Patterns of change in two contrasting Norwegian agricultural landscapes, Landscape and Urban Planning Vol 45, No 4, pages 177191.

26. Lipsky, Z (1995), The changing face of the Czech rural landscape, Landscape and Urban Planning Vol 31,No 1, pages 3945.

27. Ohmachi, Tatsuo (2002), Ending the cycle of environmental deterioration, in Ohmachi and Roman (editors), see reference 5, pages 39.

28. Takeuchi, Kazuhiko (2002), Introduction: chapter 5, in Ohmachi and Roman (editors), see reference 5,pages 171173.


195

Manila had changed rapidly in 50 years, and that there was an urban density of 200 persons per hectare about 10 kilometres from the centre. In a further study by Murakami and colleagues,(33) a join counts method(34) was applied to indicate the frequency of contiguity between urbanized and green space areas, or the degree of land cover/land use mixture. Based on the fi ndings, the whole of Metro Manila was divided into three types of region, namely: a central area with low land cover join counts and low land use join counts; a mid-distance area with high land cover join counts and low land use join counts; and an outer area with high land cover join counts and high land use join counts. These studies were concerned with the pressures of urbanization in the peripheries of Metro Manila, and suggested conservation of green open spaces through the adoption of appropriate land use arrangements in the mix of urban and agricultural land uses. To understand the process of change in the urban fringe landscape of Metro Manila, the present authors conducted a study to identify the changing patterns of agricultural lands and the differences between the lowland and terraced agricultural landscapes.(35) However, only limited discussion was undertaken. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to contribute to further discussion of socioeconomic and other factors underlying physical changes in the urban fringe landscape.

II. PHYSICAL ANALYSES AND DISCUSSION

In previous work by the present authors,(36) two study areas, each meas-uring fi ve kilometres square, were chosen and examined in Cavite pro-vince near the southern periphery of Metro Manila, to cover two types of agricultural landscape based on landform (Figure 1). This current paper follows on from that work and discusses the same two study areas. Du-ring the fi eldwork,(37) the local population referred to the northwest study area as Imus. The southeast study area was popularly known as Molino. Imus is the name of the local urban centre and is usually referred to as the poblacin area. The term poblacin has its roots in the Spanish era,

29. Moriwake, Noriko, Armando M Palijon and Kazuhiko Takeuchi (2002), Distribution and structure of urban green spaces in Metro Manila, in Ohmachi and Roman (editors), see reference 5,pages 185198.

30. Murakami, Akinobu, Kazuhiko Takeuchi, Atsushi Tsunekawa and Alinda M Zain (2002), Trends in spatial extension and land use mixture in Metro Manila, in Ohmachi and Roman (editors), see reference 5, pages 174184.

31. See reference 29.

32. Murakami, Akinobu, Kazuhiko Takeuchi, Atsushi Tsunekawa and Noriko Moriwake (2000), The changing pattern of urban population density and landscape structure in Metro Manila, City Planning Review Vol 35, pages 625630, The City Planning Institute of Japan (in Japanese with English Abstract).


34. The method of join counts proposed by Krishna-Iyer (1950), as cited and used in the study by Murakami and colleagues (2002) (see reference 30) was applied to measure the degree to which different land cover/land use categories are mixed. The method counts the joins between contiguous grid cells. In their study, the join counts method uses the number of cells of urbanized land that adjoin cells of green space as its value; in other words it indicates the degree of land cover/land use mixture. Land cover joins refer to the mix of urban built-up and green land cover (tree crowns, grass and other vegetation). Land use joins refer to the mix of urban land uses (commercial, residential and the like) and green land uses (agricultural lands and woodlands). See Krishna-Iyer, P V (1950), The theory of probability distributions of points on a lattice, Annals of Mathematical Statistics Vol 21, pages 198217, University of Oxford. FIGURE 1

Location of the study areas


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and traditionally refers to the urban centre of a town in the Philippines. Molino is the name of a barangay in the upland area, where a former dirt road was recently developed and called the Molino highway. Both study areas are located within the political boundaries of the municipality of Imus.

A spatial database was developed from image interpretation of aerial photographs from 1982 and 1997. Landscapes, as represented by land use maps, were sub-divided into landscape units each measuring six cells by six cells (a cell measures 50 by 50 metres). Pre-classifi cation was conducted to determine the presence and/or absence of agricultural and urban land uses. Further classifi cation took place using cluster analysis on landscape units that had both agricultural and urban land uses. The variables used were landscape metrics, which quantifi ed proportion to describe the occupancy of the land use of interest and contiguity to describe the spa-tial confi guration, based on the probability that a land use of interest is adjacent to the same land use. Finally, the units were classifi ed into fi ve landscape types, namely agricultural, contiguous agriculture mixed with urban, isolated agriculture mixed with urban, urban, and others that did not include any agricultural and/or urban land uses. The changing patterns indicated how landscape units used for agriculture in 1982 had either changed or remained the same in 1997 (Figure 2).

35. Malaque III, Isidoro R, Makoto Yokohari and Kazuyuki Kobayashi (2003), Identifi cation of the changing patterns of agricultural lands in the urban fringe of Metro Manila, Journal of the Japanese Institute of Landscape Architecture Vol 66, No 5, pages 901904.


37. Between 28 August and 3 September 2002, personal interviews were conducted with the local authorities, developers, landowners, farmers and other stakeholders in order to explain the results of the physical analyses. A non-structured or informal form of interview was used, and the results were validated and supported by secondary data.

FIGURE 2Hypothetical changing patterns of landscape units

SOURCE: Malaque III, Isidoro R, Makoto Yokohari and Kazuyuki Kobayashi (2003), Identifi cation of the changing patterns of agricultural lands in the urban fringe of Metro Manila, Journal of the Japanese Institute of Landscape Architecture Vol 66, No 5, pages 901905.


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a. Physical changes at landscape level

Agricultural land use dominates in all four land use maps, but its cover decreased between 1982 and 1997, from 47 per cent to 40 per cent in the

FIGURE 3Land use maps in the northwest (lowland) and southeast (terraced)

study areas based on aerial photographs

SOURCE: Adapted from Malaque III, Isidoro R, Makoto Yokohari and Kazuyuki Kobayashi (2003), Identifi cation of the changing patterns of agricultural lands in the urban fringe of Metro Manila, Journal of the Japanese Institute of Landscape Architecture Vol 66, No 5, pages 901904.


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northwest study area and from 67 per cent to 49 per cent in the southeast study area (Figure 3). The southeast study area had more land devoted to agriculture in 1982 because it was then the rural area. The northwest study area had less land devoted to agriculture in 1982 because the poblacin, or urban centre of the municipality of Imus, is located there. There were two distinct periods of land development in the urban fringe of Metro Manila between 1982 and 1997. The earlier period was prior to the rapid land use conversion of agricultural lands. In 1990, a landmark year in land development, a total of 347 applications for land use conversion were approved, covering about 1,790 hectares; the previous year, only 39 had been approved, covering about 551 hectares.(38) The later period was more infl uenced by the Ramos administration, which began in 1992 and which encouraged the dispersal of industries to the countryside,(39) making land use conversion a common component of social, political and economic conditions in the urban fringe of Metro Manila.(40)

b. Physical changes at landscape unit level

The agricultural landscape unit type is characterized not only by the presence of agricultural land use but also by the absence of urban land use. Patches of forest and bare ground/grassland can also be found in some agricultural areas. Landscape units of this type were dominant in both time periods in the two study areas, but decreased from 46 per cent (1982) to 31 per cent (1997) in the northeast area, and from 70 per cent (1982) to 41 per cent (1997) in the southeast area (Figure 4). The intensive agricul-tural activity in 1982 is made evident by the dominance of this type of

FIGURE 4Landscape unit types in the northwest (lowland) and southeast

(terraced) study areas

SOURCE: Malaque III, Isidoro R, Makoto Yokohari and Kazuyuki Kobayashi (2003), Identifi cation of the changing patterns of agricultural lands in the urban fringe of Metro Manila, Journal of the Japanese Institute of Landscape Architecture Vol 66, No 5, pages 901904.



40. See reference 10; also see reference 12; and see reference 14.


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landscape unit in both study areas. In Imus municipality, which includes most of the study areas, there was a decrease in agricultural lands used for rice production from 61 per cent (1980) to 17 per cent (1995).(41) In the 1990s, the total number of farmers also decreased from 835 (1991) to 673 (1997), along with a decrease in rice production from 9,649 metric tons (1991) to 8,062 metric tons (1997).(42) Few of the farmers descendants are currently farming, nor do they have any personal inclination towards agricultural labour. The decrease in agricultural lands is also related to an increase in the number of approved applications for land use conversion in the entire country from 12 (1988) to 1,768 (1997).(43) Around 30 per cent of the total approved applications for land use conversion were in Region IV, where Cavite province and the study areas are located. Despite the fact that this region is among those most vulnerable to land use conversion, the municipality of Imus still has substantial areas of agricultural land. This municipality was not included in Barbers discussion of land use conversion in 12 critical municipalities, 75 per cent of which belong to CALABARZON, including municipalities that adjoin the study areas, namely Dasmarinas, Bacoor and Gen. Trias.(44)

The second type of landscape unit (contiguous agriculture mixed with urban) is characterized by the presence of both agricultural and urban land uses. Here, urban land use has started to encroach but agricultural land use still remains aggregated. This landscape unit type decreased from 31 per cent (1982) to 21 per cent (1997) in the northwest study area, but increased from 6 per cent (1982) to 11 per cent (1997) in the south-east study area (Figure 4). Even before 1982, residential sub-division devel-opments had started to encroach on agricultural lands, and the patches of residential sub-divisions in this landscape unit type in 1982 were part of the 3,000 hectares of agricultural land that were converted annually from 1977, as estimated by Serote.(45) In the northwest study area, this type of landscape unit decreased between the two time periods because most of the contiguous agricultural lands in 1982 had become isolated by 1997. In the southeast study area, the encroachment of new residential sub-division developments on agricultural lands led to a slight increase in this type of landscape unit.

The third landscape unit type (isolated agriculture mixed with urban) is characterized by the presence of both agricultural and urban land uses. Here, the aggregated agricultural land use has already become frag-mented. This landscape unit type increased from 17 per cent (1982) to 34 per cent (1997) in the northwest area, and from 1 per cent (1982) to 11 per cent (1997) in the southeast area (Figure 4). In the northwest, the increase was the result of a fragmentation of aggregated agricultural lands in 38 units of the second type (contiguous agriculture mixed with urban) between the two time periods. The increase in this landscape unit type in both study areas was also due to some isolated parcels of agricultural land that had remained unsold. Even with a housing backlog in the country (for instance, that in the municipality of Imus increased from 7,276 in 1980 to 10,771 in 1995),(46) some land remains unsold or undeveloped be-cause housing consumers pay a large premium over the price of raw land. Compared to other Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines posted the longest permit delay (36 months) and the highest land development multiplier (6.7).(47)

Ballesteros(48) explained that in order to ease the process of land use conversion, land developers resort to an application scheme that

41. Socioeconomic profi le: unpublished secondary data obtained from the Municipal Planning and Development Offi ce of the Municipality of Imus, Cavite, during the authors research in 20002003.

42. Unpublished secondary data obtained from the Municipal Agriculture Offi ce, Municipality of Imus, Cavite, during the authors research in 20002003.


44. Barber, Ma Haezel M (1997), A study on the unchecked conversion of agricultural lands into non-agricultural uses: the CALABARZON experience, Philippine Planning JournalVol 28, No 2, pages 120.

45. Serote, Ernesto M (1988), Measuring the conversion of lands to urban uses in the Philippines: residential sub-divisions development as surrogate data, Philippine Planning Journal Vol 19, No 12, pages 715.

46. Municipal Development Plan (19962005): unpublished document obtained from the Municipal Planning and Development Offi ce of the Municipality of Imus, Cavite, during the authors research in 20002003.

47. Ballesteros, Marife M (2000), Land use planning in Metro Manila and the urban fringe: implications on land and real estate market, PIDS Discussion Paper Series No 200020, Philippine Institute for Development Studies, Manila. The land development multiplier indicates the ratio between the price of developed land for sale to the real estate market and the price of raw land (agricultural land). The high development multiplier in the Philippines is also infl uenced by the long time it takes to complete the process for land use conversion.



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subdivides the total land area into smaller areas. Under the approval system, areas measuring fi ve hectares or less are under the authority of the regional offi ce, while applications for areas greater than fi ve hectares require further processes in other national government offi ces.(49) Even some of the agricultural land still under cultivation is pending sale or is under the land use conversion process, and some has tenant farmer bene-fi ciary applicants under the Agrarian Land Reform Programme. Farmer benefi ciaries of the land reform programme affected by the land use con-version must be paid a disturbance compensation, which should not be less than fi ve times the average of the annual gross value of the harvest on their actual landholdings during the last fi ve preceding calendars years.(50) In addition, the land use conversion applicant or developer must provide free home lots and assured employment for the displaced farmers, along with capital to enable them to shift to another livelihood. In most cases, these arrangements are made ahead of time between the landowners and tenant farmer benefi ciaries, and the latter are paid a larger amount of money in lieu of the piece of land. It is expected that the isolated pieces of land that are intended to be part of the disturbance compensation package will be used for urban agriculture. But for those with less than two hectares, farming is an inadequate source of income to support family needs, so these farmers resort to non-farm labour such as construction work for additional income. These trends are related to the slower rate of agricultural production and an increasing urban population.

The urban landscape unit type is characterized by the presence of urban land use and the absence of agricultural land use. Patches of bare ground/grassland can also be found in the southeast study area. Units of this landscape type increased from 6 per cent (1982) to 14 per cent (1997) in the northeast area, and from 2 per cent (1982) to 20 per cent (1997) in the southeast area (Figure 4). Following the increase in population in the municipality of Imus from 59,103 (1980) to 177,408 (1995),(51) this landscape unit type also increased in both study areas. According to Ballesteros,(52) the real estate boom, which was the result of an increasing fl ow of investment that started in 1987, made landowners realize the value of their land. She further explained that land prices in CALABARZON had risen sharply: the price of commercial lots in 1991 increased by 42.1 per cent, that of residential lots by 21.9 per cent and that of development lots by 12.9 per cent above their 1990 levels. Between 1990 and 1993, the average weighted asking price of land in CALABARZON increased by 25 per cent to 32 per cent.(53) In the municipality of Imus, the total number of development permits for residential sub-division projects increased from fi ve (1993) to 71 (1997).(54)This trend slowed down in 1998 and 1999 following the economic crisis in 1997 but recently, real estate activity has been on the upswing again, according to a department head of the ACM real estate company(55) that is in the process of planning a 34-hectare residential sub-division development. Along with the increasing num-ber of residential sub-divisions, the density of commercial and industrial establishments increased from nine to 35 units per square kilometre between 1980 and1995.(56)

Other landscape units that do not belong to the four categories above are characterized by the absence of both agricultural and urban land uses; these include forest, bare ground/grasslands and golf courses. This landscape type is absent in the northwest area and has decreased slightly from 21 per cent (1982) to 17 per cent (1997) in the southeast

49. Land Use Conversion Primer Series (1998), Department of Agrarian Reform, Manila.




53. Ramos, Norman R (1996), Urban land development trends in the Philippines, Philippine Planning JournalVol 27, No 2, pages 1326.


55. Personal interview with A Landas, Head of Construction Service Group, ACM, 29 August 2002.



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area. Although some residential sub-divisions were developed over bare ground/grasslands, the abandonment of 13 agricultural landscape units between the two time periods resulted in a slight net decrease. A golf course resulted from land use conversion of a mango plantation that can be detected as a mix of forest and bare ground/grasslands in the southwest corner of the southeast study area land use map in 1982 (Figure 3).

c. The changing patterns of agricultural lands

In 1982, agricultural landscape units (whose total number was the same in 1997) dominated in both study areas, covering 31 per cent of the northwest study area and 40 per cent of the southeast study area. How-ever, if we focus on physical changes in the agricultural landscape, we fi nd almost no change in the northwest study area from 1982 to 1997, whereas in the southeast study area, changing patterns illustrate some abandonment of agriculture (5 per cent) and some direct change from agricultural landscape to urban landscape (10 per cent) (Figure 5).

The northwest study area is characterized as an alluvial plain. The southeast study area, with an elevation of more than 20 metres above sea level, is characterized as terraced (Figure 6). The two study areas also differ in land use composition, as illustrated in the land use maps (Figure 3). The

FIGURE 5Changing patterns in the northwest (lowland) and southeast

(terraced) study areas

SOURCE: Malaque III, Isidoro R, Makoto Yokohari, and Kazuyuki Kobayashi (2003), Identifi cation of the changing patterns of agricultural lands in the urban fringe of Metro Manila, Journal of the Japanese Institute of Landscape Architecture Vol 66, No 5, pages 901904.


202

changing patterns illustrated in Figure 5 show that the southeast study area was more vulnerable to urban land development and the abandonment of agricultural lands than the northwest study area. Rainfed agricultural lands (mainly in the southeast area) could only produce 4.5 metric tons of rice per hectare with one cropping cycle per year, compared to irrigated agricultural lands, mostly found in the northwest study area, which could produce 4.98 metric tons per hectare with two cropping cycles per year.(57) Both farmers and a municipal agriculture offi cer(58) claimed that water supply is better in the northwest area, making a second cropping more feasible than in the southeast area. Tenant farmers in the southeast area found that farming was less economically feasible, especially if they were farming an area smaller than two hectares. Low productivity and the landowners share result in a net profi t that is not enough to support their needs. Thus, they prefer to go along with land use conversion because their disturbance compensation will provide them with the means to invest in non-agricultural businesses. In contrast, it was common for tenant farm-ers in the northwest study area to prefer to continue farming.

According to an Imus planning offi cer,(59) in around 1982, when there was intensive agricultural activity in the southeast study area, real estate developers started to purchase agricultural land directly from the landowners. More recently, the development of the Molino highway (a diversion route for northsouth traffi c) has attracted more buyers. In the northwest study area, the price of agricultural land was higher than in the southeast study area, approximately 500700 Philippine pesos per square metre compared to 400600 Philippine pesos per square metre. Applying any pre-identifi ed multiplying factor for development costs, agricultural lands in the southeast study area were more favourable for investment and the market.

III. CONCLUSION

Rapid spatial expansion is taking place in the metropolitan region of Metro Manila. In the peripheral area most of this takes the form of low-density development that threatens the ecology of agricultural lands.

F IGURE 6The northwest (lowland) (left) and southeast (terraced) (right) agricultural landscapes


58. Personal interview withS M Arandia, Municipal Agriculture Offi cer, Municipality of Imus, Cavite, 27 August 2002.

59. Personal interview withR D Pelaez, Planning Offi cer II, Municipality of Imus, Cavite,27 August 2002.


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Demand for land for urban use is the stimulus for speculation, land use conversion and other forms of urban development in the fringe, which will eventually result in changes in the pattern of agricultural lands. According to Bryant and colleagues: There is little doubt that a basic phen-omenon underlying land use change in the regional city is to be found in changes in land ownership structure and the real estate market.(60) Pond and Yeates hypothesized that land market activity can be used to indicate urban growth pressure before land use conversion occurs.(61) In the peripheral provinces of Metro Manila, land experienced a number of ownership changes before it was absorbed by the growing metropolitan region; some of these were described by McAndrew.(62) Thus, land market activity, as it is connected to land ownership change, is one of the forerunners of urban development and may point to future urban expansion. The Philippines experienced good economic performance between 1990 and 1997, and this created a strong demand for real estate from both the domestic and foreign sect-ors. Since the rise of Manila as a primate city under colonial rule, the pro-cess of urbanization that has shaped its growth has also brought about physical changes in the nearby Cavite countryside. The fragmentation of agricultural lands that created a heterogeneous land use mix refl ects both the land ownership structure and the decisions of individuals. Similarly, the different political levels identifi ed by Kelly(63) relate to the physical changes in the landscape at different scales. For example, whether a piece of agricultural land just 50 metres square remains agricultural or changes to another land use is related to politics at the personal level. Local level politics is related to physical patterns at the landscape unit scale a municipal zoning plan, for instance, infl uences the change from agricultural landscape unit type to another type characterized by urban land use. And national level politics is related to the changing patterns that constitute the process of urbanization in the two different agri-cultural landscapes we have examined, and to the physical changes in the urban fringe landscape that were illustrated by land use maps in two time periods.

There was a major difference in the changing patterns in the two study areas, which represent two different types of agricultural landscape. The northwest study area experienced uniform patterns of change in a phased transition. In the southeast study area, there was a more direct change from agricultural use in 1982 to an urban landscape unit type in 1997. The abandonment of agricultural land was also identifi ed; land that had been agricultural in 1982 had become a bare or grassland land-scape by 1997. Although a smaller scale might indicate more comparable change, at a landscape unit scale of six cells by six cells (300 metres by 300 metres), the level of urban development in the southeast area is relatively larger than in the northwest area.

There was more urban development in the southeast area because of the lower prices for agricultural land for residential sub-division devel-opments and the strong preference among tenant farmers there for land use conversion over continuing farming. This preference was due to the low effi ciency and productivity of agricultural lands as a result of in-suffi cient irrigation for the rice crops grown there. Real estate developers also preferred the southeast area for investment, as the development of the Molino highway connecting the southern municipalities to the peri-phery of Metro Manila made the area attractive for housing and other urban developments. The northwest study area experienced a more

60. See reference 6, page 15.





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phased transition because of relatively higher prices for agricultural lands. This meant that the relatively large parcels of land needed for larger-scale residential sub-division developments were not affordable. As in the case of applications for land use conversion, applicants resorted to a scheme that sub-divided the land into small areas in order to ease the process. The northwest study area also has a better irrigation system, which encouraged tenant farmers to continue farming and made it possible to sustain culti-vation in some isolated parcels of agricultural land that tenant farmers received as compensation. Aside from relatively higher land prices, there has also been strong resistance from tenant farmers to land use conversion, and higher demands for disturbance compensation. All these factors made the land use conversion process in the northwest study area more diffi cult than in the southeast area, and urban growth was consequently faster in the southeast area over the time period examined. The current zoning plan of the municipality of Imus has categorized the southeast study area as residential and industrial zones, and agricultural zones can only be found in the northwest study area.(64) These zoning regulations are likely to be properly implemented regardless of economic and political pressures, and it can be assumed that intensive urban land development in the southeast study area will take place in the future, while agriculture will continue only in the northwest study area.

IV. RECOMMENDATIONS

Because of their proximity to urban centres, even urban fringe areas made up of prime agricultural land can become sites for expanding urban development. The resulting loss of green open space may mean environmental degradation, including fl ooding and thermal discomfort in the urban fringe, as is occurring at present in the centre of Metro Manila. An understanding of the process of landscape change makes it clear that agricultural lands can co-exist with urban land uses in the process of urbanization. It is recommended that landscape units with contiguous agriculture be preserved in order to sustain productivity and preserve their ecological functions. The mixture of urban and agricultural land uses is characteristic of the vernacular urban fringe landscapes of Asian megacities. This landscape, called Desakota by McGee,(65) was defi ned as a region of intense mixture of agricultural and non-agricultural activities that often stretch along corridors between large cities. Yokohari and colleagues(66) described this kind of vernacular landscape as a new ecological planning concept for the future of Asian megacities, and recommended that it be adopted to support the integration of urban and rural land uses. This planning concept is truly appropriate for Asian megacities, since segmented patches of agricultural land have such ecological functions as water retention capability, microclimate control, conservation of visual quality and the supply of safe, fresh food.(67) At an economically sustainable micro scale, these agricultural lands must also be cultivated and promoted as urban agriculture. Rice is important in the daily meal of every Filipino. Even if rice is a low-value crop, its cultivation plays a dominant role in food production. Prime rice paddy fi elds run the risk of being converted to urban land uses, but should be preserved for food security. Policies relating to agricultural development should encourage the cultivation of remaining agricultural lands and the re-cultivation of abandoned

64. Personal interview with A G Cantimbuhan, Zoning Administrator, Municipality of Imus, Cavite, 27 August 2002; also see reference 46.

65. McGee, T G (1991), The emergence of Desakota regions in Asia: expanding a hypothesis, in N Ginsburg, B Koppel and T G McGee (editors), The Extended Metropolis: Settlement Transition in Asia, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, pages 325.

66. Yokohari, Makoto, Kazuhiko Takeuchi, T Watanabe and S Yokota (2000), Beyond greenbelts and zoning: a new planning concept for the environment of Asian megacities, Landscape and Urban Planning Vol 47, No 3/4, pages 159171.



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agricultural lands. To promote the productivity of remaining agricultural lands, while maintaining a sound environment for urban residents, provision for water and sanitation must also be improved at the regional planning level. Urban land uses are also necessary to accommodate a developing economy, but urban development should be undertaken in landscape units with only isolated agriculture, since these units are already vulnerable to land use conversion. In this way, contiguous agricultural lands will be preserved with their ecological functions. In cases where isolated open spaces can no longer sustain agriculture, these can also developed as urban parks within high-density urban developments, to provide a better environment.

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