‘DISPERSED DEV’T OF BAGUIO PUSHED TO SUSTAIN PROGRESS’

August 17, 2024 Metro BLISTT

BAGUIO CITY

Baguio Tourism Council chief Gladys Vergara is pushing dispersed development for progress to be sustained in the highland city. City life, she criticized, has become defined by a sense of mobility focused in Baguio’s central business district. But fresh from a tourism tour of the city outskirts, Vergara noted that development in the areas visited “are too sparing and feeble” to induce socio economic growth. “There is too much growth concentrated in the commercial sections of the city, while development in the outskirts seems slow and too laid back,” she noticed.

“Moving development into the far-flung areas shall induce incentive among their residents, while distributing the
seeds of growth there,” she further pointed out. Vergara identified thickly populated barangays like Irisan, Asin and Loakan as worthy enough for development to take firm roots for its benefits to be shared in equitable proportion.
“City life is not what happens in the central business area,” she said, but what drives growth in its totality. She further stressed the need to disperse development into the city’s outskirts.

“Growth momentum in these populous areas must be accelerated to spread out the benefits of a strong economy
where city folks living away from the core get to experience sustainable development,” she said. The highland city, planned for only 25,000 people, is commemorating its 115th anniversary as a chartered city on September 1, 2024.
Malacañang, however by virtue of Proclamation No. 641 signed by Executive Secretary Lucas P. Bersamin by authority of President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. issued on July 29, 2024, declared September 2, 2024, a Monday, as a special non-working day in the city.

Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong earlier requested the Office of the President that September 2, 2024 be declared as a special non-working day in the city in lieu of Sunday, September 1, 2024 to enable the city’s
residents to fully participate in the said occasion.

Artemio A. Dumlao/ABN