Greenbelts 1 and 2 in the iconic Greenbelt Mall area have been closed for renovation since April this year, part of the three to four year “re-development” (reportedly costing P13 billion) of the Ayala Malls concept for a mixed-use commercial complex in this prime area in Makati. Greenbelt was once a park and had an aviary at its beginnings in the 1980s. It slowly developed through the years into a small “run-to” commercial center for the community of residents near the area and the daytime population of office workers from nearby office buildings, along with students/professors/staff at the Asian Institute of Management (A.I.M.) school and hotel near the park. The New World Hotel is also in Greenbelt, on Esperanza Drive.
Regular massgoers at the Santo Niño de Paz Chapel in the center of Greenbelt Park (built in 1983) nod to each other and venture to say a painful “Sayang, ano?” What a pity indeed, to see our cozy little “town center” boarded up from us — it is like watching memories and experiences of many years being put in a box, to be taken away to an attic to gather the dust of forgetfulness. But there can be no sissy emotional attachment — the re-development of the Greenbelt Mall will be for the greater good of the greater others.
The 41-year-old Greenbelt 1 will be redeveloped into a luxury mall showcasing leading local global brands. It will have four levels of basement parking and four levels of retail spaces above (BusinessMirror, Feb. 20). It is rumored that these will be in two high-rise buildings fronting Legazpi St. — with the floors above leasable as office spaces for Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs) and other corporate businesses. Greenbelt 1 will be reopened in 2028.
Greenbelt 2, fronting Esperanza Drive, with its present 12,355 square meters gross leasable area, will retain its 28 two- and three-level leased high-end residential units (single-detached) on top of retail stores that will continue the format and offerings of the adjacent Greenbelt 3 – which contains imported-brand luxury stores including “major league” global fashion houses like Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, etc.). “Greenbelt will evolve from the Philippines lifestyle capital to the next regional fashion and luxury destination,” the developer, Ayala Land said (manilastandard.net, March 31).
Perhaps the “sayang” said by the small, affected community around Greenbelt comes with the helpless realization that “progress” cannot be stopped — and “bigness” can only swallow up “smallness.”
“Big is Beautiful” is the magic success formula for the global capitalist society that has risen from the brutal levelling of the World Wars in the 1940s. Expansion and more expansion. Production and delivery of products and services covered the world. Big, bigger, biggest — global corporations and international economic cooperation took over the forces of supply and demand in economies big and small. Aye, there’s the rub — smaller economies must now scratch for that bottom line of profit. All is fair in love and war, and it has been an unequal war for survival and wealth.
Yet in the 1970s, at the time of the worldwide Oil Crisis, emerged a German-born British economist, Ernest Friedrich Schumacher, who espoused “Small is Beautiful,” advancing small, appropriate technologies, policies, and polities as a superior alternative to the mainstream ethos of “bigger is better.” (His book, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as If People Mattered, written in 1973, was ranked by The Times Literary Supplement in 1995 as among the 100 most influential books published since World War II.)
Schumacher’s philosophy is one of “enoughness,” appreciating both human needs and limitations, and the appropriate use of technology and concern for the depleting environment. It grew out of his study of village-based economics in India, which he later termed Buddhist economics. He discussed the gap between the center of the world system and the developing world as it existed then, and the responsibility of economic actors to temper their profits with the needs of their markets.
Schumacher argues for more decentralized control of large enterprises, a form of nationalization that can successfully compete with conventional profit-driven businesses but with the welfare of employees and the common good in mind. He faults conventional economic thinking for failing to consider the most appropriate scale for an activity, denouncing the notion that only “growth is good,” and that “bigger is better.” And further, questioned the appropriateness of using mass production in developing countries, promoting instead “production by the masses.” (inkedin.com, June 14, 2016).
Fifty years after Schumacher submitted his propositions for humane economics (which some branded as socialist and left-leaning), his mantra, “Small is Beautiful,” seems to have urged a deep meditation on the sins of greed for gain and glory in obsessive profit-taking.
Perhaps the COVID pandemic that tyrannically slowed global economic activity forced the point on temperance and a “back-to-basics” simplicity. “Gigantism,” as Schumacher sees it, does not seem to have worked, then and now. “For several decades, mass production methods were producing more cheap goods than ever before; the mass media and mass culture opened up new opportunities to a wider audience than ever. It was creating bigger markets and bigger political entities, (which) led to a dehumanization of people and the economic systems that ordered their lives,” economist Madeleine Bunting said in her review of Schumacher’s book (theguardian.com, Nov. 10, 2011).
Schumacher warned that the modern economy is unsustainable. Natural resources (like fossil fuels), are treated as expendable income, when in fact they should be treated as capital, since they are not renewable, and thus subject to eventual depletion. Nature’s resistance to pollution is limited as well. He urged governments to focus on sustainable development for themselves individually and for the interdependent global economy. Shared expertise and cooperation are vital to the survival of all. Schumacher cautioned that technology transfer to Third World countries will not solve the underlying problem of an unsustainable economy. He prescribed instead, an intermediate technology transfer that will consider the level of the developing country to use it effectively. He worried about the creation of wants beyond needs, and the possible, and perhaps unintended manipulation of demand and supply. Power corrupts.
Schumacher was also one of the first economists to question the suitability of using GNP – gross national product – to measure human well-being, emphasizing that “the aim ought to be to obtain the maximum amount of well-being with the minimum amount of consumption.” He deplores the heedless rush with which emerging economies are growing, without concern for moral and spiritual values.
Might that be about us, the small Philippine economy, trying to act like the “Big Boys” of the developed economies, wanting to have what they have, thinking about how we can get into the “in-crowd” of the Rich and Famous of the world?
First, we must think of the 25.24 million poor Filipinos (22.4% of population in 2023) whose per capita income is not sufficient to meet their basic food and non-food needs (pna.gov, Jan. 19). The Gini coefficient — which measures the inequality among the values of a frequency distribution, such as levels of income — in the Philippines is forecast to be 0.42 in 2024 (equal distribution of income = 0). The unemployment rate in the Philippines is seen at 5.08% and there are about 2.44 million unemployed people in the Philippines this year. The employment rate in the Philippines is expected to be 56.46% in 2024.
Is it enough that the Philippines rose 23 spots to land 53rd (out of 143 countries surveyed) in the 2024 World Happiness Report? (The Philippines was 76th in 2023 and 60th in the 2022 reports.) The World Happiness Report, initiated by the United Nations in 2011, is a ranking of national happiness based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various (quality of) life factors — the more basic of which are peace and contentment.
“I suggest that the foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modern sense, because such prosperity, if attainable at all, is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of man,” E.F. Schumacher said.
Amelia H. C. Ylagan is a doctor of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines.