Baguio City Tightens Development Rules, Reviews Investments Based on Water, Environment, and Risks

BAGUIO CITY – The latest Baguio land use plan may correct decades of unregulated overdevelopment in the summer capital that has been blamed for its woes over dwindling water supply, overpopulation, diminished tree line and horrendous traffic jams that began as far back as the 1980s. Water, the environment, the natural risks and fragilities of Baguio such as sinkholes, and the impact on the livability of surrounding communities will now dictate what future building investments shall be allowed to proceed under the latest city land use plan (CLUP) and proposed reforms to the zoning ordinance now being discussed by the Baguio City Council. READ: Baguio water sources see rising turbidity due to incessant rains If new building investments are not supported by sufficient water supply at their preferred locations or if the size and network of access roads to future structures are inadequate, these business endeavors may not get the blessings of the local zoning board and City Hall under the new CLUP, said architect Donna Tabangin, city planning, development and sustainability officer during a special session on Friday (September 4) of the Baguio City Council. Overdevelopment had been one of the key concerns of Baguio’s redevelopment. At one point, Mayor Benjamin Magalong had contemplated imposing a moratorium on building constructions in 2019. Tabangin said policy reforms being contemplated by the new CLUP are guided by the 2019 urban carrying capacity study which concluded that many Baguio resources are no longer sufficient for the modern population. For example, the city breached the carrying capacity of its water supply (0.15 square meters per person per day) in 2002, but the water utility has been rationing tap water much earlier to stretch supplies until rains come to replenish its aquifer. “So future development projects must be driven by the carrying capacity of their areas. If water supply is insufficient, we cannot allow high density development there,” Tabangin told the Council. But Baguio, a highly urbanized city that serves as a top tourist destination and a north Luzon education center, will not be turning away investments either, she emphasized. Private and public developers, who incorporate solutions for areas with resource restrictions, can push through because investments would also be “incentives-based,” Tabangin said. “As long as the carrying capacity allows it and the community benefits,” good builders and developers would be rewarded with additional floor space or an extra building floor when their projects guarantee services to the public, according to the CLUP presentation. More importantly, new investments, from both public and private endeavors, would now follow “risk-informed planning,” guided by geophysical risks analyzed and mapped out by scholars and government experts. According to Tabangin, geotechnical studies have determined that Baguio is more vulnerable to landslides (39 percent) rather than earthquakes (28 percent), floods (11 percent), sinkholes (17 percent), and forest fires (5 percent). Businesses used to believe that the summer capital was more prone to seismic risks, partly due to Baguio’s destruction when it was rocked by the 1990 Luzon earthquake, she said. The city’s vulnerability map has become essential because of Baguio’s limited space, and investors have started penetrating inner city neighborhoods. It says 53 of Baguio’s 128 barangays with a combined span of 434 hectares are classified as “very low” risk in a multiple hazard chart, while 34 villages with a combined 844-hectare coverage are “low” risks. The map says 28 villages covering 1,997 hectares are “moderate” risks, but 11 barangays spanning 2,423 hectares are “high” risks and 2 with a combined 52 hectares are labeled “very high.” The city will require public investments to build over a thousand grade school and high school classrooms to address a backlog and hire more than 2,000 teachers, Tabangin said. It also needs to build housing for 28,123 informal settlers, of whom 3,032 reside in danger zones, she added. Even government projects must heed the policy reforms, Tabangin said, because of recent findings that some roads turned out to have triggered slope erosions. The reformed zoning regulation and CLUP would require new legislation. /jpv