Urban replanning: Wanted bike lanes

Today, the 1st Cebu International TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Conference will be held at the Cebu International Convention Center from Aug.12-14. This is a unique, one-of-a-kind of conference that brings a lot of academicians to our shores to learn more about teaching English as a Second Language. The conference theme is “The English Language: The Power to Connect”. This international conference brings together both international and nationally renowned speakers and a wealth of abstracts from over 100 educators and participants worldwide.

 Topics like teaching English to international students, professional issues on educational standards and alternative approaches and latest trends in teaching English as a Second Language (ESL). This is part of making the Cebu Hub for English Language Excellence (Chele) and organized by the Cebu Leads Foundation and the Mandaue Chamber. When Cebu achieves this goal, that means more foreign students will come to Cebu to learn how to speak English. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans now live in Cebu because they can learn English here at a lesser cost. But when the Chinese wake up and realize that if they come to Cebu and learn English here, then I doubt if there would be enough rooms in our hotels to house all of those who will come. So go to the CICC and learn more about Chele.

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Kudos once more to the officers and men of the Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (MCCI) for their successful hosting of the One Cebu Business Summit at the CICC. Because of a family business meeting, I missed hearing the speech of world-renowned Architect Felino “Jun” Palafox Jr. But I’m glad that our local news reporters were able to cover his speech, which was very intriguing.

What I liked was when Archt. Palafox said, “The local government and private sectors should change their perception of what is a good community. An integrated concept that will allow people perhaps to live upstairs and work, shop and do other things downstairs. The problem is that we planned our cities by looking at wrong model cities. Too Hollywood. It’s time to change this.”

Of course Palafox meant that if we planned our cities properly we could still correct the mistakes we made. This means Cebu must update its obsolete urban plans. I fully concur with his observation. If at all, the last urban plans that I have seen for Cebu was the Central Visayas Regional Projects (CVRP) which was a Marcos-era development program.

In November 2009, I interviewed on my tv show former Bogota Mayor Enrique Peñalosa. He showed us how imbalanced we are in our communities, where the majority of the Filipinos who are poor and do not own cars are given only a 3-meter sidewalk (where our mayors allow sidewalk vending) for pedestrians, while giving more roads for cars. Isn’t this a contrast to the late Pres. Ramon Magsaysay’s doctrine of “Giving more laws to those who have less in life?” In the end, trisikads are allowed to use our roads and thus, traffic gets snarled.

As Archt. Palafox suggested, we should encourage people to walk and the only way to do that is give them wider sidewalks that are free of vendors. Palafox also suggests that we should have bike lanes. I fully agree with him on this. Cebu City isn’t really a huge place unlike Manila. If we have dedicated bicycle lanes, I’m positive that more people will buy bicycles to go to work or to school. This means, we really have to update our long outdated master plan for Cebu City or Metro Cebu for that matter. So, do we have the political will to do this? What mayor having only a three-year term would embark in such a noble endeavor?

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As I left the CICC, I could see the huge smoke coming from the conflagration that struck Barangay T. Padilla. I turned on my car radio and heard the various reports about the raging fire. As usual, the complaints are the same in almost every single fire that hits us - that the Fire Department lacks firefighting equipment. So what’s new? Crying that the Cebu Fire Department (CFD) has outdated equipment won’t solve this problem. If indeed Cebu City has the money to buy old airplanes, then it should have the money to buy new fire fighting equipment.

Looking at the front page photo of the burnt area gives us an idea that pretty soon, the former owners of those burnt homes would rebuild their structures in the very same places. This area should be planned properly; otherwise, we never learned any lessons from this fire.

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