Wednesday, August 01, 2007 Osmeña: To be or not to be a city By Antonio V. Osmeña Estatements
LIKE everything else, cities are subject to physical decay. As they age, they use more and more of the matter, energy and money resources for the repair, upkeep or replacement of old facilities while new ones need preventive maintenance.
The ability of cities to generate their own funds and decide how to solve their problems has declined considerably while their responsibilities and budgets have increased. Today, most cities receive more money from national legislature and the National Government than from their own tax revenues.
Much of this aid must be spent in ways determined by national bureaucracies far removed from local problems. To make matter worse, cities have to rely on increasingly unpopular property taxes for about 87 percent of their tax revenues.
Rather than pay higher taxes and user fees, residents of some cities choose to settle for lower levels of service. They learn to live with potholes, periodic water shortages and less dependable public transit.
The concept to annex the municipality of Cordova to Cebu City would accelerate the economic sprawl of the area.
In fact, the economic growth of Lapu-Lapu City is attributed mainly to the investment support of mainland Cebu, particularly entrepreneurial linkage and investment in the cities of Cebu and Mandaue. Cebu City’s entrepreneurial talents help greatly the economic growth of adjacent towns and cities.
Most of the big tracts of land in Mactan, specifically Cordova, are owned and managed by families from mainland Cebu. Annexing Cordova to Cebu City and to introduce in the area a comprehensive land use plan and control would encouraged the development of these idle tracts of land.
Surprisingly, the economic sprawl in Talisay City has been quite slow, except along national highways and those subject to residential subdivision development.
Talisay Mayor Soc Fernandez should try to revitalized the over 2,000-hectare Osmeña Reforestation at Campo 7 and make it a tourists attraction.
By 2020, Cebu City’s urban sprawl will have spread outward and merged physically with neighboring cities and towns up north to Liloan and to Naga town in the south, which will form a large urban region or megapolis containing at least one million people.
Now is the time to plan and construct a freeway interconnecting Liloan, Consolacion, Mandaue, Cebu City, Talisay, Ming-lanilla and Naga.
Let us stop this political maneuvering of creating more cities and concentrate instead on investing in road infrastructure needed in the urban sprawl.
Since 1850s, the inhabitants of Ciudad de Cebu have made their port an international shipping destination and trading has been the area’s major business activity.
A city, like a biological community undergoing secondary succession, begins as an immature pioneer settlement when land is cleared. The early stages of city development are characterized by high productivity to build the necessary structures and products, few services, inefficient use of matter and energy resources, small community organizations, and a rapid spread outward of small structures.
When more people move to the suburbs, freeways and mass transit systems have to be built to accommodate commuters.
Obviously, the economic sprawl of a barangay, town or city depends on the foresight of local political leaders to introduce land use planning and control.
The foresight of then Serging Osmeña Jr. to transfer the Lahug airport to Mactan and connecting Mactan to mainland Cebu triggered the economic sprawl to Lapu-Lapu.
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The major problem of road congestion in the Banilad-Talamban and other areas in Metro Cebu is the result of a hodgepodge attempts to limit or promote growth, which are based primarily on the extrapolation and reaction to crisis methods of land- use planning.
How could a town or city economically prosper when the government fails to invest in road infrastructure development? It is unfortunate that begging for national aid has become a bad habit instead of sourcing locally the development of open spaces, roads, sewer lines, and waste treatment plants.
