Obenieta: Qualifying the quick

Saturday, February 11, 2012

TO walk the talk of progress, the first step is to find out where we would likely wobble and stumble flat on our faces.

Up front with our vulnerability could be the better part of valor, hands down, even though uncertainty finds us groveling with a clown’s grin. Speaking of Cebu and waxing futuristic about it, pride is fine. True, but only as long as it’s not pulling our leg and taking us for a ride into false assumptions of ascendancy.

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Down the road, reality check came as quick as the ground quaking beneath our feet. While many still reeled from the rumor about a tsunami on the heels of a temblor, cooler heads gathered at the forum called by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (Rafi) recently to reckon its theme: "Creating Future Cities: Where Do We Begin?"

The end of the world may be around the corner, but the crowd at Rafi looked forward to crack their foreheads over “issues surrounding the sustainability of Metro Cebu.” Doomsday or deliverance boiled down to this simple choice, so it seemed: Sink or swim.

Deep, no doubt, are the dilemmas—“increasing social, economic and environmental challenges such as rapid urbanization and population growth, aging infrastructure, flooding, declining competitiveness, congestion and inadequate housing, among others”—-arising from nightmares of modernization. More reason, in fact, to factor in the necessity of hitting rock bottom.

Up to no good, we are not. Despite the doldrums that aptly describe our level of disaster preparedness, may our Bisdak ego be no more badly battered or “baduy”-—as someone claiming to be “Ahcee Flores” swore infamously—-than our weakness for allowing ourselves to wallow in resentment or descending into delusions of indestructibility.

Emboldened as many of us are in taking our cue of conquest from Lapu-lapu and have the last laugh, may we also be humbled enough to mock our gullibility for rumor-mongering and headlong rush to hysteria. Didn’t the sound of horror and helplessness after the earthquake call the bluff of our puffed-up posturing as metropolitans fond of preening or flaunting ourselves in front of the world’s mirror?

Cracked may be our confidence to deal with emergencies in a more sober and streamlined manner, but such a fiasco could also firm up a resolve to pick up the pieces of our collective responsibility as citizens, whose Latin word originates the notion of the “city” and its meaning as a community.

Together, we could be worthy of Rafi president Ramon E. Aboitiz’s suggested imperative for “comprehensive or integrated approach” in coping with the demands of development. Such tack takes into account human behavior—-ever so inclined to the irrational—-in relation to its sociospatial coordinates: the environment as well as the institutional infrastructure of government that must “promote collaboration across localities and sectors.”

Consolidation and civic involvement are dry concepts, however, unless oiled with sweat. And like emergencies, the response can’t wait.

(geemyko@gmail.com)