Revtalizing Old Downtowns: Heritage Conservation Summit 2014

I attended the 3rd Heritage Conservation Summit held in Iloilo last October 25, 2014. It was supposed to be a three-day event, with the first day meant for an exclusive group of heritage building owners and the third day for a tour around Iloilo. I lived in Iloilo for two years so I decided against the tour, and since I'm not a heritage building owner I also skipped that one. (I learned later on that they opened the activity to everyone).

The last time I set foot in Iloilo was 14 years ago. Everything has totally changed of course. The airport is new, SM was not there yet, and even the hotel where I stayed (Sarabia Manor Hotel) was located somewhere else back then. First on my list when I arrived was to eat La Paz Batchoy. I prefer eating Batchoy only when I'm in Iloilo! The next item on my list was to find my old friends. Thanks to the internet, we managed to get connected again.

The summit was a huge success: more people came than expected, everything was on time, the audience actively participated, the place was full of people until the end, and the talks were very relevant. I also got to talk to a lot of people who are advocates of heritage conservation. It was refreshing to share ideas with non-architects. In my table alone there were two ladies from Dumaguete (an interior designer and a teacher in tourism), there was a lady who already migrated to New Zealand (a retired public school teacher), the owner of the Ruins in Bacolod and his three friends.

Iloilo did a very good job in revitalizing their downtown. When I stayed there I didn't notice that all the buildings lining up the street of Calle Real were American period structures. Now that they cleaned up the building, everything just looked different and fascinating. There is a lot to learn in Iloilo in revitalizing a heritage district and I am inspired to bring everything I learned to Cebu.

In the conference, speakers from Iloilo, Escolta, and Vigan shared their success stories. There were also people from agencies who can be partners in the revitalization efforts who shared how they can help. There were also a couple of tech experts who shared some tools in documenting heritage sites and structures using the internet and other visualization software. It had the complete ingredients for the theme of the summit.

In Cebu, where I stay, the mayor just announced that he is setting aside funds to revitalize Colon Street, I wondered if his plan is based on some studies. His effort to revitalize the American-period Osmena Boulevard was a blooper when he announced that he was going to bring it back to its glory during the Spanish era. I am now inspired to organize a similar conference focusing only on Colon St. By inviting the building owners to listen how their businesses can flourish when the place is revitalized, I'm sure that the mayor's plan will be a total success.

I am sure that every participant in that summit is moved, one way or another, to do something for their own hometown. My idea for a conference on Colon Street is just one of the many ideas I came up with. I guess this is the best measure of success of the summit, when it managed to move everyone to action. I am now looking forward to the next summit. I missed the first two previous summits, I am determined not to miss any of it in the future.

Participants of the summit take a group pic. I was at the right. We were so many I didn't fit in the picture. My pose went to waste.

My take on the Green Loop Experiment

The Green Loop Project is a very big project that one can not simply implement in a single stage. It requires complex planning since it involves three local government units and different sectors of society are also affected. At this stage, all we have is a concept. The University of San Carlos may have developed some schemes on how it would look like but these are all conceptual.

As a concept the Green Loop project is a very good project. I think everyone would agree. Imagine a loop that has bike lanes, tree-lined, pedestrian and pwd friendly.Then imagine this road connecting various destinations in the four LGUs then enhancing these destinations by pocket parks and other public places so that people from clustered buildings get together. Imagine this loop to be part of the disaster risk and management plan of Cebu making emergency calls and response very efficient. Who would not like that? The city even endorsed the Green Loop proposal as its entry to the Livable City Design Challenge.

This concept, no matter how beautiful, must be tested to see how it can be refined and made more realistic. I believe that it is in this spirit that the Green Loop experiment was conceived and conducted. The experiment was used to gather data not to make the traffic smooth. Of course it has its inconveniences! In fact, the first time I heard about the experiment I already imagined all the complaints of people, especially the lazy ones. It is laughable to hear all the complaints afterwards.

What I find amusing also is that some complaints are based on "perceived" situations. During the experiment, I was staying in Jolibee in Escario all the time because of problems with my right foot. My students in the graduate program, together with some people from the College of Arts and Sciences of USC were all over the loop doing interviews. I decided to observe the flow of traffic from where I was seated and discovered the traffic was flowing constantly although in a slow pace. It would only stop for less than a minute before it goes again and it takes several minutes in each stop. I was actually expecting traffic to stop for several minutes and flow for only a few seconds (opposite to what actually happened). When I interviewed some people myself (like taxi drivers and bystanders), they told me that traffic was not flowing at all. This was their main complaint.

Some people confuse reality with their imagination. Some people have different standards of calling things. For them, traffic flowing slowly, no matter how constant, is considered not flowing. This is why I decided not to take these opinions very seriously. It would be better to work on empirical data.

After that experiment, I thought of a number of ways that the project should do to move forward. I think everyone will agree that the main problem, where the success of the Green Loop is hinged on, is that there are simply too many cars on the streets. Strategies should be made to lessen the volume of cars. I made an initial list which I hope to study further in this coming days:

1. We can start by putting bike lanes on the streets. Nothing encourages biking more than a permanent bike lane. We have already made so many of these Sunday bike lanes. It is starting to sound impractical. The route should be well studied so that people find it useful and practical so they will actually want to use it.
2. Introduce buses to handle more commuters. This should be very easy to implement but it requires political will (the only factor making it difficult). If people find buses very intimidating then we can make an innovation... let us make the jeepneys bigger! They're starting to make jeeps out of elfs. This should be encouraged and those smaller jeeps should be kept off the streets.
3. Start building walkable communities. This is an idea we got in USC when we were going over the Green Loop project. Identify a cluster of buildings, connect them with a plaza, then provide amenities like stores, toilets, restaurants. The idea is to keep people from going far to eat, to meet, or simply to spend their free time.

These ideas are all implementable with very little inconvenience to the general public. I'm sure that other people have more ideas on how to lessen the volume of cars on the road. I get a lot of comments that Filipinos do not like to walk. Some reasons: no sidewalk and no protection from heat or rain. I worked in Makati for four years and after getting down the bus I would walk several blocks to my office simply because it is faster than waiting and taking the jeepney! Besides, the walk is pleasant with all the sidewalks there. From these we have two learnings: make good sidewalks and make public transport inefficient for short travels. The latter can achieved by enforcing a jeepney stop strategy....

All these problems are solvable. We need people who can do more than just complain. We have a lot of people who are very good in complaining. We might as well have a contest on who complains the most and make money out of this contest.

The Movement for Livable Cebu should not be affected by these complaints, even if it comes from newspapers. For me, they simply don't have anything to write about and they don't have some good ideas in their heads. I even heard a colleague in school saying the Green Loop is a good idea but it is not for us here in Cebu! What a loser!

Through the Green Loop experiment we managed to make more people know about it. This is a strategy of politicians who want to run for office. All they need to do is let their names stick to the minds of people either because they did something good or they did something bad. During election, people tend to vote for names that are familiar to them, regardless if the person is a criminal or a saint.

Through the Green Loop experiment we also identify those people who simply complain and do nothing, especially people who think that progress is not for Cebu and that we should just continue living a miserable life forever. By knowing who they are we will know who to ignore.