The Baguio Centennial Commission a.k.a Centecomm (sounds like a menacing Soviet agency during the cold war haha) is asking you to share your vision for the city in the next 20 years. Our ideas will be taken seriously daw by the Centecomm folks so let’s go ahead and envision something.
Mine is not so much a vision for Baguio but I hope that officials will pedestrianize the city. Instead of constructing projects designed to solve the problems of the rich (i.e., where to find a parking lot) let’s build pedestrian lanes that will encourage people to walk and make walking enjoyable.
Really a pedestrianized Baguio will be a much better city. You know, a city with cleaner air, lesser traffic, and healthier people too.
Oops, by the way, isn’t the Baguio Centennial logo above kind of cool? Congratulations to whoever designed it.
From Sunstar Baguio:
As the city’s 100th charter day celebration draws closer, the Baguio Centennial Commission (Centecomm) is asking residents to submit their ideas on their visions for Baguio 20 years from now.
Centecomm chairman Virgilio Bautista is emphatic in this call, as it would help shape a common mental picture of what Baguio should be after two decades.
“Originally what we wanted was a vision for Baguio 100 years from now, but that is too far into the future and most of us will not be here to see it happen,” Bautista said.
The 20-year vision can include such mundane concerns as itinerant vending along the city sidewalks to more grand images for the city like its complete makeover.
“Any idea will be taken seriously, none will be rejected or laughed at,” Bautista said.
The idea behind the visioning is to get ideas on how to solve the current problems and woes of the city and get them from concerned Baguio residents.
“Maybe through this we can arrest the urban blight now existing in Baguio,” Bautista said. “We have to decide today what we want Baguio to be and not leave it all to chance,” he added.
The Beyond 2009 Committee of Centecomm will receive all suggestions and visions on the theme: “What do you imagine Baguio to be 20 years from now.”
Ideas can be coursed through the Centecomm office at the Baguio Convention Center.
“We expect the full cooperation of the whole city (on this),” the chairman said.
Centecomm meantime enjoins every Baguio resident to make small improvements in their households in preparation for the centennial celebrations next year.
Bautista said every little thing counts as the 100th birthday of the city comes closer.
He is encouraging residents to make their homes small tourist spots by keeping their surroundings clean and orderly and to have plants of any variety dotting the immediate vicinity of the home.
“If we can do this, we will have a very good city to visit, especially next year when visitors will come from practically everywhere,” he said.
INFO SOURCE: Sunstar Baguio. IMAGE CREDIT: Baguio Centennial Commission.
why 20 years? if his nephew, the Baguio mayor, is planning to put up a parking building on Burnham, bid out a shopping center at Mines View, erect a Korean theme park in heavily forested Botanical Garden, build 3 flyovers in the Central Business District WITHIN THE NEXT 3 YEARS, what will be left of Baguio in 20 years?
The Centecomm has a good idea in this one, and I do hope they follow through and pick the good suggestions that’ll really save Baguio and not just rake in “pocket money” for the would-be implementors. But I have the same question as Lisa. I’ve said something along these lines on her blog but I’ll say it here again, I hope you won’t mind Bill!
We SHOULD think further ahead than a hundred years because whatever we do to the environment today, tomorrow, and in the next 20 years will have repercussions for more than a hundred years! I think it’s selfish and ignorant to say that 20 years is good enough because “most of us will not be here to see [the future] happen” anyway. This kind of thinking is sooo Last Century!
Maintain the greenland. This should be true in any other town/city.
20/20 Vision of Baguio
-Air quality is rated the best in the country and among the best among cities of the same size in Asia and the World.
-A highly educated citizenry that is rated best in the country and among the best in Asia and the world. A special quality of this enlightened state includes deep understanding and deep-seated pride of its multi-faceted ethnic and cultural heritage.
I think with these two, all others follow.
-Just an opinion of one person out of millions-
Regarding logo, it is aesthetically pleasing and exudes a city that is vibrant.
Logo design is always a controversial process and everyone not directly involve has an opinion. Congratulations to the artist for coming up with a centennial logo that is vibrant. Baguio’s children will remember it for a long, long time because it is very colorful.
BUT it would have been better if it also made one FEEL that Baguio is located in the highlands and that it was once a dominantly Ibaloi place, had an American presence, and now a very cosmopolitan city. Possible solutions could have included an image of zigzag road somewhere, use of Ibaloi language in expressing “culture of caring”, a building reminiscent of American presence, people images that express this cosmopolitan complex.