Bagumbayan: A paradigm shift in PHL planning (Part 1)

A lot has been written about the Filipino Story, that is, the nation-state version, in the past one hundred years or so. However, to today’s generation, much of it is boring and unconvincing not only because its performance audit is pretty scant on the ground but also because it is based upon a tacit assumption of a paradigm. I use the term paradigm in a Kuhnian sense, as having a structure—the political, social, and historical conditions underlying the basis of knowledge that defines how we view our story, how we go about studying it, and how we interpret its research findings. One of Thomas Kuhn’s concerns in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is to contest the common belief that a paradigm advances incrementally and cumulatively. For him, any reigning paradigm will eventually be replaced by a new paradigm, hence, a paradigm shift. It is from this vantage point that I wish to argue that if the development of our country is to maintain its relevance and vitality in the future, we must chart a new planning direction and develop the critical construct necessary to face the world that now confronts us, or risk the fate of mashing the same potato over and over again, so to speak. Of course, there’s nothing new to the constant challenge of “housecleaning”--of discarding some and of keeping some. In fact, such preoccupation is a core problem in the planning and development of any country. What is new, however, is the process of how our social identity fractures and forms as we are caught in the maelstrom of social change. Still, the process must not be construed as an outright rejection of traditional thinking, but rather as an invitation to reflect on what happened to us as well as what lies ahead of us. Faced with these challenges, I wish to adopt a particular terrain, a particular vocabulary which will allow us to articulate a new paradigm and hence, a new story and a new planning perspective. To understand the paradigm shift is to understand the story of “Bagumbayan.” The term comes from the Filipino word “Bagong Bayan” which literally means New Country, New City, or New Town. It came to be known as Bagumbayan because of the difficulty of the Spaniards to pronounce the “ng.” Instead, they pronounce it with an “m” thereby, “Bagum” rather than “Bagong.” But most importantly, Bagumbayan is the location where our national hero Jose Rizal was executed before a firing squad for alleged treason against the Spanish rule. The term is indispensable to us because it provided us with a martyr and an icon who composed for us both in life and death a paradigm of our struggle for independence and self-determination. There are two ways to interpreting the term. The first one is "The Road to Bagumbayan." According to this view, Bagumbayan represents an “arrival.” It is the fulfillment of our yearning to forge an independent nation-state. It answers the question: “what happened to us?” A close reading of its origin reveals a European mold, a system of thought espoused by Enlightenment philosophes like Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Condorcet that dominated the intellectual movement of pre-Revolutionary France. However, it was the French Revolution of 1789 that provided the philosphes the platform to put their ideas into reality. The revolution challenged the legitimacy of a theocratic and simultaneously aristocratic state founded upon the “divine rights of kings” with republican ideals premised on “the consent of the governed.” Thus, in place of the ancien regime (old order), a new order was constructed by politicized and enlightened individuals. In our case, the road to Bagumbayan is represented by the eventual establishment of an independent nation-state that was very much apparent among Filipino thinkers of the revolution especially those who studied in Europe. It is the road of Rizal, of Lopez Jaena, of del Pilar, of Luna, of Ponce, as well as the road of Mabini, of Bonifacio, and of Aguinaldo. Although they all studied and embraced the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment that were in vogue in France about a hundred years earlier, nonetheless, we now have an inkling as to why our thinkers of the revolution were called “ilustrados" or the enlightened ones. As co-heirs of this intellectual movement that was imported all over the world, the idea of the nation-state became our engine of decolonization, republicanism, and democracy. Or, as the French would preferably say: liberté, egalité, fraternité. However, as the age of colonialism ended and the age of independence began, it raised a fundamental question whether once it was achieved, the nation-state would represent the end of what is politically possible, nothing more and nothing less. Is it the ultimate phase of political organization? Is it the final stage of political form? Or, as the neo-Hegelian American philosopher Francis Fukuyama alluded to in his book The End of History and The Last Man that the liberal and democratic nation-state is “the end of history.” That is, despite the resurgence of other political forms such as the authoritarian states of the People’s Republic of China, Islamic Republic of Iran, or Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in the end, it remains the most broadly appealing idea out there. Is it? ___________________________________ The author is an urban and regional planning consultant and a professor of urban sociology and urban planning at California State University, East Bay. He has written books on the American Urban Regional Experience and Perspectives on Urban Society. Email: efren.padilla@csueastbay.edu