Quezon City considers itself the green lung of Metro Manila, and with reason.
La Mesa watershed alone accounts for nearly one quarter of the city’s total land area, complemented by the expansive UP Diliman campus and Quezon Memorial Circle at its center.
This forms a continuous green mass that anchors not just the city’s environmental quality but Metro Manila’s as a whole, Quezon City City Planning and Development Officer Jose Edgardo “Jed” Gomez Jr. told DZRH News program The Situation Report on Monday, September 21.
The Quezon City government official said the city’s approach to green space is not a passive inheritance but an active planning target that the city is working to expand and integrate into a unified network.
He said the three major green anchors—La Mesa, UP Diliman, and Quezon Memorial Circle—are complemented by smaller pocket parks spread across residential subdivisions.
The city’s current planning work, Gomez said, is focused on connecting all of these into a coherent green and blue network that residents can move through rather than simply visit in isolation.
“In our plans consistently, we have regarded ourselves or made it a target to call ourselves the green lung of Metro Manila. And a large part of that green lung of course is sa La Mesa watershed,” Gomez said, noting that the green and blue network is not an aesthetic project but a foundational one.
Gomez said the presence of trees, waterways, and open green spaces is what makes the rest of a city’s liveability possible by regulating temperature, improving air quality, supporting biodiversity, and providing residents with spaces for rest and social interaction.
“Kailangan may certain degree of stability or of presence of greenery, of what you call the green scape and the blue scape, which is the basis of everything else. And then from there we continue on by building the infrastructure and then the connectivity,” he said.
Gomez said Quezon City is also positioning itself as a gateway city, with the new airport in Bulacan province expected to draw more traffic and investment through the northern corridor and into the city and beyond.
“We think that Quezon City is going to be a much more connected city to the rest of Metro Manila. And the Bulacan airport is also going to play a large role in that. So magiging parang gateway na rin ang Quezon City, of course through Caloocan,” Gomez said.
