Recreating cities: Learning from Asean cities

I was at the Eduardo Aboitiz Development Studies Center (EADSC) at the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. (RAFI) for the whole day yesterday for another round of the Understanding Choices Forum: Urban Development Series. Yesterday’s forum was focused on ”Urban Development and Governance: Risks and Opportunities-Learning from other Cities.” This was in cooperation with RAFI, the University of Cologne, Southeast Asia-German Forum for Urban Futures (ForUm-Network) and the National Economic and Development Authority-Region VII (NEDA).

 I have attended numerous Understanding Choices forums in RAFI, but it was the first time I attended a forum joined by urban planners from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia with experts from Germany. It was indeed a way to learn from each other the ways and the means to urban growth and development. Indeed there are so many similarities in the growth and development with cities in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and therefore we can truly learn from each other.

 Thanks to RAFI for bringing this forum to Cebu so we can see and talk to our fellow ASEAN friends on how they solve problems like flooding, finding the proper dumpsites or how to address urban decay and above all, how to recreate our cities and turn them into green or low carbon cities. Call it a green urban renewal. We shall write on this in future columns.

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 I got this emailed reaction to our article about the bad roads in Canduman Ave. in Mandaue City, which is a sad commentary about how things are going on in Mandaue City today.

 “Dear Sir Bobit: Once again your avid reader. Speaking of Mandaue City, the present city executive is not performing well. The way he ran the government of Mandaue City is lousy. I have been to Iloilo and Dumaguete City lately as part of my job, I found their main roads much cleaner compared to Mandaue. Try to go around the Mandaue City Public Market, my goodness, it’s in chaos, dirty, most of all is the air pollution from livestock (grabe kabaho).

 During the previous term of Mr. Cortes, the Mayor now, he often blamed the city council’s being majority in the opposition that has not cooperated with his administration that’s why he could not implement his good plan for the city. How about now, still no good accomplishments so far? Look at the Mahiga Creek inaction, the vandalism by the youngsters on our roads and edifice.

 In Dumaguete and Iloilo, you seldom see buildings along the roads vandalized by spray paints. In one kilometer maybe you can see one or none at all, while in Mandaue, maybe every ten meters or less you can see spray paint vandalized buildings, fences and houses. Sad to say maybe the youth in Mandaue are not well disciplined and uneducated or their parents are not good disciplinarians, or the policemen are acting deaf and blind, or truly the city officials are incompetent.

 Our roads and streets are the showcase of the city to our visitors. I hope Mr. Cortes, the Mayor of Mandaue, would wake up to the reality and will not play politics (too many job order employees in Mandaue right now doing nothing). I have passed also the Kanduman road; its truly in bad condition, last year pa na hangtud karon pa gyud diay. You are very right in your observation sir, COA is not doing their jobs faithfully. Thank you and best regards. Name withheld upon request.”

 Reading this emailed comment, if my avid reader didn’t mention the City of Mandaue, I’d swear that he was talking about the City of Cebu, which is in a very similar state as the City of Mandaue. But this fellow is correct in his observations that during the first term of Mayor Jonas Cortes, he used the reality of having a majority opposition in the city council as his best excuse for his not delivering on many of the basic services that is due to the constituents of the City of Mandaue.

 Well you can say that Mayor Cortes has ran out of excuses in his new term for his political party is now the majority in the City Council. Having said that, it is not yet a year since he assumed his second term, which is why we expect more from him than in the previous term.

 Again I’d like to emphasize that during the term of his father the late Mayor Demetrio Cortes, we constituents of Cebu City would often look at Mandaue City as an example of good governance and development. They had cemented roads and had the best garbage trucks. Alas, these memories are fast slipping away for Mandaue City of yore is but a mere memory of good times. Mayor Jonas better get his butt moving because as we said already, he has run out of excuses. It is a shame that Vietnam has overtaken us even if they suffered through a war and that’s because their leaders work hard!

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