A great foundation of a city

A fortnight ago, I read scholarly dissertations of two ideas printed in Newsweek. The two schools of thought were not necessarily opposed to each other but they so approached a common topic from different perspectives that they might also, just as well, be taken to be debating on it. That point of divergence made the reading more engaging. While the discussions were too profound for me to simplify, I will attempt to restate the topic, for purposes of this column today. Let me call the focus of their write ups as “what made America great”.

 Necessarily, that restatement of the topic assumes that USA was or still is great although the dissertations I alluded to above, tended to view that that country had, to an appreciable extent, gone past beyond that stage of greatness. Both of them were expressing their thoughts on how to get back that degree of world ascendancy.

 One discussant specially arrested my attention. He mentioned that the biggest investments by the American government were made many decades ago. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower, splurge on massive infrastructure called Interstate. Another administration poured resources on education and under still another leadership invested heavily on science. Those three areas of heavy financial outlays, the writer claimed, propelled the surge of America.

 The present administration of His Honor, Cebu City Mayor, Michael L. Rama, can take at least one of them to focus on as the city’s own model for progress.

 The city may very well take care of its infrastructure needs as a primary target. The city needs a version of the Interstate, no matter how small the case may be. There are many parts of the mountain areas that remain inaccessible by road. Unfortunately, these places can be good sources of agricultural products. No one attempts to convert such areas to productive efforts because going there, in the first place, seems impossible.

 It is difficult to believe that there are neighboring sitios in the city’s hinterlands that are not connected to each other. We have specific example. Sitios Langub and Kamandagan are parts of Barangay Sirao. But a resident of the former sitio cannot drive his jeep directly to the latter. For his shortest distance, he has to go to the Ayala Heights located at the next Barangay of Pung-ol Sibugay, and drive few kilometers more thru the trans-central highway before he takes a turn to a dirty road towards Kamandagan. And there are more areas similarly situated.

 The mayor must include in his plans roads to the mountain barangays that are safe. Today, there are some constructions going on. Unfortunately, the width of the concreting done between Guba and Sirao and between Agsungot and Cambinocot is very narrow. It does not allow free flow of traffic. Where two vehicles come from opposite directions, one has to come almost to a halt to avoid collision.

 When we speak of safety, there are stretches of certain roads that have to be re-engineered to be really safe. The concreting need not be done all along present roads because some of their parts were probably built without technical planning. In these sections, road have to be rerouted.

 It may be too much to expect the mayor to do great deed but if he hopes to put in place the foundation of a great city that the future generation can look back to and write about in their own international news magazines, he better work on it now.

***

Email: [email protected].