Wednesday, September 17, 2008 The streetfood phenomenon By Antonio V. Osmeña Estatements
METRO Cebu, specifically Cebu City, has become a fertile ground for the streetfood phenomenon.
Street food in the Philippines is a convenience for those without time to cook, an economic and lifestyle phenomenon that flourishes during hard times.
Wherever one goes, one sees food being sold and eaten on the streets or in open spaces. Ambulant vendors dodge traffic, offering peanuts, fruits in season, candy. Some push wooden carts with heating devices so that fish balls or peanuts-in-the-shell are steaming hot. Stationary vendors occupy sidewalks along prime streets.
The day-to-day, cash-to-cash, person-to-person, small enterprise suits the inhabitants in which the mass majority constitute the sellers and buyers of streetfood. The Filipino idea of community also explains why meals outdoors, among strangers, are comfortable.
But unfortunately, the individual rights of vendors interfere with those of the majority. Individual prerogatives must give way. The majority need the sidewalks, which support the cheapest mode of transport—walking.
There is failure on the part of local government planning agencies to provide decent sidewalks.
The late Mayor Flo-rentino Solon was the only local executive who was concerned about improving the city’s sidewalk.
Today, the city’s sidewalks are either encroached on by vendors or non-existent. Sad to say, road networks throughout Metro Cebu pose a hazard to pedestrians.
Why was the bicycle route discriminated in the master planning of public streets, arterial highways and traffic flow, considering that majority of its inhabitants cannot afford to own a car? In today’s energy crisis, students and wage earners could have safely used the bicycle routes and save transportation expense to buy food.
Our local elected officials lack the political will to make a careful analysis of the physical and economic survey data that would furnish the basic information upon which the master plan is to be founded. This plan, comprehensive in its scope, must be sufficiently flexible to permit growth and economic adjustment to dynamic changes within Metro Cebu.
As a rule, a master plan should provide a clear view of the existing pattern of public streets, arterial highways, traffic flow and the relative adequacy of inter-city or town highway transportation, as well as water and air transport.
In the preparation of the master plan, special attention must also be given to intra-city and suburban transit lines and to the adequacy of the transportation network system in relation to present and potential traffic demands. Although enlightened civic leaders can readily be convinced of the merits of good city planning, they find it difficult—in practice—to cope with the financial problems that the preparation and execution of a master plan entail.
As a rule, the financial problems pose the greatest handicap to city planning. There are other problems, of course, including legal, social and technical aspects of guiding the orderly growth of a community; but these are generally subsidiary to the problem of financing the improvements that are called for in the master plan.
Zoning as a tool of city or town planning may be employed to direct growth and encourage land uses that are held in the best interest of the community. This type of zoning is known as “directive” zoning as distinguished from “restrictive or protective” zoning, which safeguards established—and as a rule—higher land uses from encroachment by lower and non-conforming use.
Land use zoning, it need be emphasized, does not by itself create land values. Land values are made by people and not by municipal decree.
Contrary to popular belief, too, zoning does not prevent land value declines.
The practice of granting use exemptions and the maintenance of the property’s status quo is known as “spot zoning.” But unfortunately, the city’s zoning interpretation of spot zoning is to classify a certain area of a zoned commercial into a residential or socialized residential housing zone.
It is time to re-classify the agricultural zoning of Cebu’s hinterland where many areas still classified as agriculture have been encroached on by residential subdivisions and commercial development.
