The Filipino-Australian community in Melbourne came together on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, for a charity dinner in support of the victims of typhoon Tino in Cebu. The event, “Sugba para sa Sugbo,” was organized by Epic in partnership with Kumbira Café & Grill, a Filipino restaurant owned by spouses Rene and Archie Manuel. The evening also coincided with Rene Manuel’s birthday, turning a personal milestone into a shared act of generosity.
The gathering was graced by Jesus R. S. Domingo, Philippine consul general in Victoria, Australia, who delighted guests by rendering a song, adding warmth to an already meaningful occasion.
The menu showcased Filipino flavors presented with a refined, Western-inspired touch, capped by a curated selection of petite desserts prepared by chefs Jose Miguel Lontoc and Miguel Vargas, who united for the cause.
According to organizer Sam Alcordo, the proceeds will be coursed through Angat Buhay, a partner organization in Cebu to benefit typhoon victims. Beyond fundraising, the evening also served as a quiet reunion, allowing me to reconnect with friends from my late-1980s stay in Melbourne — among them spouses Rudy and Nelba Alcordo and Walter Villagonzalo — proof that time and distance do little to diminish shared roots.
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Metro Cebu is running out of room — not just on its roads, but in its options. This is a sequel to my Jan. 8 column: Is Metro Cebu at the breaking point? The proposed “Conceptual Land Use Strategy to Decongest the Urban Core and Strengthen Climate Resilience” by urban planner Joseph Michael Espina arrives at a moment when the metro’s problems can no longer be dismissed as growing pains.
The traffic congestion, flooding, heat stress and declining urban livability are now structural conditions, produced by years of land use decisions that favored short-term growth over long-term balance.
For so long a time, Cebu City has carried the burden of the entire metropolis. It hosts the bulk of employment, higher education, hospitals, ports and government offices, while surrounding LGUs (local government units) absorb housing without equivalent economic activity. Every weekday, Metro Cebu performs the same exhausting ritual: mass inward migration in the morning, mass outward migration at night. No amount of road widening can solve a problem that is spatial at its core.
Espina’s proposal is important because it tells an inconvenient truth: congestion is not primarily a transport failure — it is a land use failure.
And, with the lack of a sanitary landfill as mandated by Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, Cebu City is now facing a garbage crisis with the closure of the Binaliw Sanitary Landfill after the pile of garbage collapsed, or as one politician described it: “trash slide.” Except for Consolacion, Cebu, the other LGUs denied Cebu City’s request to dump its garbage at their respective landfills.
What elevates the proposal beyond conventional planning is its explicit link between decongestion and climate resilience. Overconcentration in the urban core, especially in low-lying and reclaimed areas, has increased flood exposure and heat accumulation. At the same time, poorly regulated upland development weakens watersheds that once absorbed rainfall and moderated floods.
Metro Cebu is thus being stressed from both ends — coastal areas hardened by reclamation and uplands stripped of their natural buffering capacity. These are not natural disasters; they are policy outcomes.
Planned decentralization — through the development of secondary urban centers with jobs, services and housing — offers a way out. It reduces daily travel demand, spreads economic opportunity and aligns growth with environmental limits. This is not anti-development. It is development that recognizes geography, risk and reality.
Speaking of decentralization, I am reminded of the vision of the late former Bogo City mayor Junie Martinez, shared with me during one of our unplanned conversations in the year before the Covid-19 pandemic struck the country. Martinez envisioned positioning Bogo City as an alternative call center hub — one that would help ease the heavy concentration of such industries in Cebu City while providing much-needed livelihood opportunities for his constituents. More importantly, it would have allowed Bogohanons working in Cebu City the option of returning home to their families.
That vision, however, was hampered by the lack of reliable telecommunications infrastructure needed to support call center operations. His untimely passing ultimately put those plans on hold. Whether this dream will be revived now rests with those who have stepped into his political shoes — his children, Mayor Maria Cielo Martinez and Vice Mayor Carlo Martinez, along with Provincial Board Member Tining Martinez — should they choose to carry forward the legacy and aspirations he left behind.
The problem, of course, is not a lack of plans. It is the lack of discipline to follow them. Comprehensive land use plans are frequently amended to suit immediate commercial interests. Reclamation projects move forward despite unresolved environmental and hydrological concerns. LGUs continue to plan in isolation, even as Metro Cebu functions as a single, interconnected urban system.
Espina’s strategy implicitly calls for stronger metropolitan governance — planning that transcends political boundaries and election cycles. Without this, decongestion efforts will remain fragmented and climate resilience will remain a catchword rather than a policy outcome.
Metro Cebu is approaching a tipping point. Traffic congestion now exacts real economic costs. Flooding threatens public safety and investor confidence. Climate risks compound existing inequalities, hitting the poorest communities first and hardest.
The choice is no longer between growth and restraint. The choice is between planned growth and untidy decline.
Espina’s proposal offers Metro Cebu a chance to choose differently — to treat land as a finite, fragile resource and planning as an act of responsibility to future generations. The question now is simple: will Metro Cebu plan, or continue paying for past mistakes?