By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Baguio was a fra cry from how it was 50 years ago. That was probably how it was envisioned by our American colonizers. There were wide spaces. Not much vehicles and one could still drive home even if he lost his brakes. Just stay on first gear and then use the handbrake in case of emergency. In short, the city was sparsely populated then.
We can say a lot of bad things about our American colonizers from being bad capitalists to being racists but being harebrained is hardly one of them. They did not think small. Look at where they established the parks, Teachers’ Camp, Camp John Hay and the Mansion House. They did not cramp them in a small place. There were nice spaces or green areas in between.
When we Filipinos, however, took over in running the city, we started imposing our ‘tingi’ mentality. While the Americans bought and they still buy cigarettes by the ream, we buy them by the stick. We can even buy soy sauce by spoons, contained in small cellophanes.
And so we started building houses so close to each other. A lot good for one house turned out host to three residences or even more. Then we carried this over when we could afford to put up commercial buildings. The floor areas of these occupied the whole lot where it is standing, up to the last inch. No green space, or even breathing space.
Had the Americans foresaw that we could be too smart for our own good, they could have made it a permanent requirement for Townsite Sales Applicants that a residential lot should only have one building per 300 square meters and that 30% of the area should be a green patch where gardens or trees must be maintained. But we outsmarted them here. Thus, it is often the case that a lot acquired from the city would have a building for every 36 square meters of it.
The result, you could smell what is being cooked next door, or could even be an interested witness of any domestic quarrel happening there. Drama! We would say.
We did not even respect the cliffs and the precipices. People built houses all the way up from the base of the mountain until it reached road level where the building would look like it is just one storey but look down and there are four storeys of the house below the road.
So now we have about 400,000 people in the city at any given time. The Americans built it only for 25,000 residents.
We ensured of course the inflow of people from the suburbs by the government’s inability to develop outlying areas to become also cities. So people keep on flocking to the city and there are no meaningful efforts to decentralize it.
The results are the complications of any densely populated city—pollution, dreaded diseases, crimes, low morality standards and overall low quality of life. Sooner or later, the city will be as jam packed as Metro Manila where 18 voters could be found residing under one end of a bridge and another 18 under the other end. Yes, they have become a political force that their existence is perpetrated without any improvement of their circumstances. That is OK with them.
In short, there is something inhuman about their existence. And surely we in Baguio City are moving towards the same situation. There would be something inhuman about us when we will be living like sardines.**
