Baguio City Councilor Mylen Yaranon is pushing for amendments to include culture and environment in the Comprehensive Land Use Plan (Clup) to strengthen and include facets needed to manage growth.

Yaranon, in a proposed ordinance, wants to include plans and strategies for culture and creativity because of the recent designation of Baguio by the Unesco Creative Cities Network as a Creative City to be integrated in the Clup.

The city official added other amendments needed include an environmental management plan to address the city’s current concerns to mitigate natural calamities, a sustainable development plan to address problems concerning the carrying capacity dimensions of Baguio, a smarter roads ordinance to be integrated in the transportation network plan, and a health plan to promote physical activity as well as a city disaster risk reduction management plan.

“The Clup of the City of Baguio is a Long-Term Framework Plan of Nine (9) Years from 2013-2023. It has four (4) policy areas: Settlement, Protection, Production and Infrastructure. From year 2013 up to the present, events, concerns and issues arose that need to be addressed for developmental purposes,” Yaranon said.

Once the proposal is approved, the implementing agency will be the City Planning and Development Office (CPDO). The measure was approved in first reading during Monday’s regular session.

Last year, the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) has ratified the city’s CLUP which charts the Summer Capital’s physical and economic development from 2013 to 2023.

Yaranon has called on the local government to look at the carrying capacity of the city in terms of population to make the necessary studies on development and how it would be planned and managed adding the environmental code, City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management and the CLUP must be married together including zoning to compensate each other.

The ordinance, “Integrating Sectoral, Cross-Sectoral And Inter-Sectoral Plans And Strategies To Better anage The City’s Growth And Change” aims result to identification and prioritization of programs, projects and activities and as basis for Comprehensive Development Plan.