KAPEKONOMIYA: Probing the UP Land Use

    Last January 10, 2014 at around four in the afternoon, students gathered at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, School of Economics Auditorium for the KAPEKONOMIYA: Probing the UP Land Use Forum. For a rich discussion regarding the use and the development of UP’s land, everyone gained a lot from the invited speakers, namely:  Prof. Ruperto Alonzo, the former Vice President for Development in the UP System, and Prof. Judy Taguiwalo, professor in the College of Social Work and Community Development.

    The forum was indeed a very informative one. The speakers did not fail to provide facts and impart their knowledge on the specific issue of the UP land use. There were statistics shown to serve as sufficient evidence for the speakers’ claims. It is quite interesting to hear lots of different opinions about the use of our land. There could be no question about us having lots of properties, but an unanswered question could be, “Are we putting them into good use?” One could say that it is a duty of a UP student to make oneself aware of the issues of the UP system, and make a stand on them.

       There are uses of the land that have quite been helpful to the UP population, such as having new dormitories and school buildings. However, the rising issue of privatization has been dwelled upon during the forum. For example, there has been an aim of increasing the resource generation zone while planning for our land use, and it is said that a huge part of this zone would be allotted to the field of science and technology. Like what the speakers said, how could UP Ayala Technohub and the UP Town Centre possibly be used for science, technology, and academic purposes, wherein it just obviously paves a way for commercialization to take place?  According to Prof. Judy Taguiwalo, this privatization leads to an erosion of the public character of UP. “Edukasyon, hindi negosyo.” When it was said that such assets would be built on idle areas, how can one consider UPIS an idle area? As members of the UP community, can we really choose privatization over education?

      I understand that such land usage may contribute to economic returns as forms of assets, but does the money that we generate from these so-called assets fair enough to continue privatizing our properties, even with those still being used for educational purposes over the years? It is said that UP only generates approximately 20% of its budget from leasing its assets like UP Town Centre and Technohub, while the rest or the 80% comes from government subsidy and tuition fees. It seemed that we do not get a lot of our budget from these commercial assets, and this is confirmed by our need for continual increase of tuition fees. Truthfully, it may have been better if more school buildings such as laboratories were made, not merely malls or lots of food establishments. In this manner, the aim of using land for scientific and academic purposes would be more clearly achieved.

  

The UPD Land Use Plan

Approved by the 

UP Board of Regents 

on 23 June 1994 

(Area: 493 hectares) 

Source: 

Office of the Campus      

Architect

     Quoting Prof. Taguiwalo, “The University of the Philippines is a public university, not a private enterprise.” We are here to serve the people with education and knowledge. Thus, we must also keep in mind our values of education, honor, and excellence, and live up to these standards that we have had for years. Privatization and commercialization in our land are now evident. Yet, we must not let these get in the way of our endeavour as one UP community to serve the Filipino people, while striving for proper use of our land and properties geared towards better education.