Pristine air, verdant meadows, near and distant mountains, clear rivers and springs and the cool weather have made Baguio City an ideal setting for Americans who once established a rest-and-recreation station in the city for their war-weary soldiers and where people afflicted with tuberculosis could recuperate. They dubbed it the “summer capital of the Philippines,” where governance was transferred from Manila so they could escape the sweltering heat of the lowlands. Daniel Burnham drafted a master plan for its development designed for a settlement of 25,000 people, akin to the early layout of Chicago City, which he also conceptualized.
For about a century, Baguio had enjoyed the reputation of being the favored destination of both foreign and local tourists, especially during the summer months. In the rush to cash in on the opportunities presented by this, something was almost totally lost in the city in the name of tourism development. It was the race to accommodate tourists that stripped the city of the charm that once beckoned them to visit Baguio.
Wooden cottages gave way to modern hotels, paved roads and concrete structures warmed the city with island heat effect, towering pine trees fading in a haze of low clouds, and evergreen scents overcome with diesel fumes. Real estate boomed and continues to do so, resulting in pine trees being leveled to the ground to make way for subdivisions.
Today the city is almost unrecognizable from other cities, its visual character homogenized by commercial chains of businesses. The heart of the central business district, Session Road, where once homegrown businesses served as landmarks, is now lined with fastfood restaurants and other establishments that also dot the commercial landscapes of every other city. Jumping on the development bandwagon has caused the city to lose its charm.
The decadence associated with rapid urban development now plagues the city—garbage, water shortage, flooding, island heat effect, slum settlements caused by in-migration, traffic woes and, most serious of all, a sense of apathy among many of Baguio’s residents.
But with the consequences of a city carrying a population way beyond its capacity, and natural and manmade disasters causing upheavals in community life, aside from the daily inconveniences caused by a development gone awry, part of the city is waking up to the need to make it more livable. Politics, however, continues to hamper a more enlightened approach toward transforming the city.
The local government is currently in the middle of addressing constraints. But its initiatives are confronting a number of challenges—plans for bulk water are underway but hampered by many circumstances; road-widening projects that seem to have no end, a solution that adds to the traffic problem due to road closures; a grand plan for a waste management facility, which would be put up at a pristine mountain site; and the amnesty for power and water connections for informal settlers.
Curiously, in crafting the 2017-2022 Baguio Tourism Development Plan, it seems that apathy is indirectly addressed, and there are efforts to awaken a sense of history and an appreciation of what makes the city distinct. Rather than defending the need to cut trees to make way for more tourism structures, there is now more emphasis on having open spaces.
Speaking to crafters of the tourism plan, Prof. Ian Morley of the History Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong looked back at the beginnings of Baguio, which was envisioned as a planned city, a planned urban environmental totality and with a local government operation, making the city unique. It was a city planned by Daniel Burnham, then regarded as the world’s greatest city planner, to be a model for other settlements across the globe, a type of city planning known by the end of the 1800s as the City Beautiful, and Baguio was the hub of the City Beautiful as a global urban design phenomenon. Open spaces were integral in Burnham’s blueprints.
Morley noted that Burnham Park sitting at the heart of the city is arguably the most intact of the City Beautiful design of Burnham in the Philippines. “This is something I hope the municipality truly appreciates and will hold dear. Without the park both the identity and physical environmental quality of Baguio will alter, and not for the better, I should add.”
He discussed the core features of Burnham Park—mature trees, a sense of country with its foliage and manmade lake; defined borders; undulating topography for visual effect; and its vast size of 32 hectares, so it is not seen all at once.
With the spotlight on Burnham Park, Morley asked a question that explained his point. “If a city has a historic built fabric of distinction, as Baguio does, how can it deeply fit into any tourism development plan? Part of the answer lies, in my opinion, on three words—built cultural heritage.”
Contrary to becoming on a par with other cities by scrambling to copy what they have, a “heritage approach” to tourism seems to be having less than more.
“The park was to work in a manner opposite to contemporary urban dynamics, that is to say, the construction of faceless concrete, ever more vertical buildings, slab-covered outdoor spaces that do little more than act as suntraps, and shopping malls selling the same goods which by their growing numbers in the towns and cities of the nation create a sense of placelessness, not placed within their respective urban environments,” Morley said.
He added that built heritage in the form of buildings and spaces guarantees the city’s distinctiveness across time. Also, something crucial to cultural tourism promotion is that heritage informs us of the past that has led to the present, and by tangibly touching the past bestows people the opportunity to comprehend the shared way in which they not only identify themselves, but see the world about them.
Morley said Baguio’s future development greatly “hinges on the political elites grasping the city as a historical, total urban landscape. Evidently without heritage being valued and protected it becomes irrelevant and ultimately will disappear.” This way, he said, “historic built fabrics will be the victim, not the asset, in a developing society.”
It should be food for thought for planners, who sometimes surreptitiously cut down trees to give way to commercial structures. And in the light of present-day conflicts over the Burnham Park development where the city appears to be on opposite sides of the fence over issues like a parking facility to be built within the perimeter as it remains the last open space, or commercial establishments that require roofs above the facility.
Former city architect, Joseph Alabanza, and still a respected city planner, is full of nostalgia for the city of his youth. “The skating rink was an open space and we looked up at the blue skies, enjoyed the sunshine and frolicked when the rains poured. Now it’s a dark enclosed space,” he rued.
So often recommended in the tourism development planning forum side by side with the value of open spaces was the need for a sense of pride of place, the opposite of apathy.
But there seems to be a correlation, as Morley said, that to see means to own what you see. This is provided by open sightlines in open spaces. And from a sense of ownership comes a pride of place which becomes the premise for wanting to keep beauty.
Urban planners are at odds over the directions of city planning. One school of thought is for building heritage, which prominently features open spaces, and the other is for modern development.
Alabanza emphasized that planning must consider all the senses to avoid noise and air pollution and give people a sense of serenity, such as gardens and open spaces. For many years now he has been advocating for the “pedestrianization” of Session Road. There is an ongoing debate in the city council regarding this. The local government is testing the waters by closing the road at least once a month.
Recently, Aris Go, a young architect, was tasked to renovate Malcolm Square at the center of the city’s commercial space. He transformed the place, once a crowded parking space at its side, into a seamless promenade area, and with no doubt, even just subliminally, lifting stressful walkthroughs here into a breathing respite from the surrounding traffic and congestion.
“We wanted a space with a focus on people, not cars,” he said. The space also solved a lot of petty crimes like snatching as there was an open view of the activities of the people.
Malcolm Square was once a watering hole for horses. But when it started to be crowded, the space no longer created memories, he said.
It was a step that catered not to the whims of modernity but to the comfort of one’s senses, going back to the value of open spaces on which City Beautiful with Baguio as the model was founded.
The concept of built heritage as a tourism tool goes beyond the concept of just something old. It can be robust. It can create jobs. It makes the place distinct, and interesting for tourists, Morley concluded.
“Without your understanding and know-how on built heritage of whatever form or age, local elites will continue to perceive it as a stumbling block to development, not as a value utility to regional economic stimulation,” Morley said. He said the thinking that money and heritage cannot coexist is wrong.
He cited as an example his own country, Great Britain, where heritage tourism contributed £4.3 billion in 2010 and generated 113,000 jobs in remote places and in the central district.
The 2017-2022 tourism plan offers a window to revive the sense of pride for the City Beautiful of which Baguio can earn a distinction of being a model not just in the Philippines but in other parts of the world.
Image credits: Se7en73 | Dreamstime.com, Azel2101 | Dreamstime.com, flickr.com/rexpe/cc by 2.o, Ng0845127w | Dreamstime.com