Flattening the pyramids

In the beginning, there was space, and the space was beautiful. And Burnham said, let there be parks. And a hundred years ago, he reserved the choicest part of that space as that - a park, an open space where everything else in the future city spring from. Around it are the bare necessities – a town hall on one end, a government center on the other, parallel to it was the central business district, and emanating from that space, like a spider web, are the roads that led to residential areas enough for what he thought was this beautiful space's carrying capacity – 25,000 residents.

Surrounding this charming open space were scenic mountain sides, and so he said that no structure should be built that would ruin the picturesque skyline of the future city of Baguio. That open space eventually bore his name.

While other cities with a much bigger land area would have a park or two at most, for some none at all, Baguio's design included several open spaces. Daniel H. Burnham, renowned city planner during his time with several prominent beautiful city plans to his name, wanted to make the most of and protect what Baguio had - its cool climate, its unique landscape and wonderful scenery.

Fast forward a hundred years hence, and that cool climate is being threatened with pollution, that landscape unique only in how so many structures can be crammed into such limited space, and that picturesque backdrop gone, buried behind and under towering hotels and commercial buildings. How could they have missed the point?

Why did the people in charge of the city's public transportation think it was right to clog Baguio's narrow roads with thousands of extra taxicabs and jeepneys when even on the busiest days, a lot of these polluters are without passengers? While our city officials stand on the steps of city hall proclaiming to whoever cares to listen to them that Baguio is a character city, right behind them just a stone's throw away are sleazy establishments that proclaim to everyone passing that Baguio has become a city of characters.  

How could they think that Baguio is much better off with several imposing shopping malls? How could they think that Baguio needs three golf courses? How could they think that Baguio can carry garbage from more than 250,000 residents instead of from 25,000? How could they think that Baguio is a prettier site with towering commercial billboards?

How could they think that developing Baguio means getting rid of what it is all about: its natural beauty.

You don't carve the rice terraces to make way for condominium buildings, or flatten the pyramids to make way for a mall, or put tarpaulins on the Eiffel tower to sell cellular phones, or hold a tiangge at Stonehenge.  

Nothing says it better than Joni Mitchell: "They paved paradise to put up a parking lot."

And Baguio's parks, or at least whatever remains of them? When they're not being used for trade fairs and motorcycle races, they're a reminder to all of us: we don't know what we've got 'til it's gone. 

Here to stay

One hardly hears of good news about Baguio these days. Whether you get it on print, the world wide web or from stories told in coffee shops along Session Road, the sentiment is the same: there's hardly anything left of the Baguio we all knew. Makes you wonder why you're still blogging about the city in some internet cafe in town instead of in some far away land where the money's better, the air is cleaner and the surroundings are greener.    

A friend who has since left Baguio with her family after living here for almost two decades once said that the only thing left in Baguio is the cool climate. And that too isn't as cool as it was before, perhaps thanks to more motor vehicles coughing up toxic fumes into the air and with this more engines heating up the city. Not to mention the hot air that comes from mouths of people in high places - but that only heats up people's heads. I digress. 

On a bad day I would tend to agree with my friend - on a day when the traffic is so bad it takes you a full hour to cover a three-kilometer distance. Or when they close Session Road to vehicles for a week during Panagbenga for "Session Road in Bloom" which, with all the stench and garbage generated by the hundreds of stalls selling hotdogs and sweet corn and cellphones and hotdogs and sweet corn and cellphones (and a couple of stalls actually selling flowers, the supposed point of the whole festival), feels more like Session Road's doom. Or when I'm refused by a taxi driver because he doesn't feel like driving to where I wanna go, or when a friend shows up with bruises all over and a swollen jaw and a missing phone and wallet, no thanks to a taxi driver slash hold-upper and his cohort who hid in the back of his cab and pounced on my friend who didn't have a clue because he hailed that cab a stone's throw away from the Baguio City Police Office. Or when, you know, you're in the middle of it all and Baguio just doesn't feel like Baguio anymore. 

But there are good days, days when there's still so much more to Baguio than its cool climate. There's still that hardly known spot somewhere in Wright Park where you can lay down on a mat on the grass and let your children run wild among the trees and up and down the hill on a clear day.  

That same area still offers the best option for afternoon walks - just around the lagoon or through the Little Flower convent up Outlook drive and back towards the Mansion House.

 

On another afternoon, we brought the kids with us for a jog in Burnham Park, after which some friends met up with us and while the kids went crazy on those trikes for rent, 

behind us there were girls flying high up in the air rehearsing a cheerleading routine...

and teen-aged boys doing their own stunts on skateboards and improvised ramps and pipes. 

While a pair of much younger boys amazed us with their rollerblading skills as they wheezed past lovers and vendors and a guy getting a full body massage (!) 

next to vendor selling hot coffee in the skating rink. At that time of the day, when the sun is already setting, you can rent a boat "one-to-sawa" for the price of an hour.

You can hear the distant crash of cymbals and the distorted guitar sounds and you know there's one of those free concerts going on at the big mall up on a hill, and you're glad tha there's still so much going on outside those concrete walls, and you look around you, out there in the open air, with enough room to stretch out your arms and legs and breath in a deep sigh and as the fog comes down on this weary city, it makes you smile knowing that there's still so much more to Baguio than just the cool climate. 

And that's why you stay.  

You don't know what you've got til it's gone

Baguio was never about a mall, nor was it ever about a grand parade of floats bedecked with fake flowers. It's not about the humongous P100,000-day convention center, nor the proposed multi-storey parking structure, it was never about having a multimillion-peso concrete pine tree. It's not about having thousands of taxicabs on the road, or having enough hotels to host an advertising congress, or that many call centers, or pseudo-English language schools.

Next time you're on your way to town, leave your car and take a jeep. Listen in on the conversation between the driver who's been plying the same route for decades and the old man who's been riding the same jeep in that same seat ever since he was a young high school boy at City High – they know what they're talking about.

Take a walk through Burnham Park, and hear the laughter of the children at the swings, have your portrait taken by a photographer who've captured the portraits of generations of families, friends, lovers who have made the air and the trees of the park an indelible part of their lives, buy a bag of peanuts and just watch the world go by, or stay still, under the trees and watch the fog hover just above the lake as boats full of smiles come in and out of view, or walk over to where the men play chess and watch the game while having your shoes shined.

Weave through the jeeps and the pedestrian traffic and stop to say hello to an old friend and have a nice steaming Benguet brew in a glass in any of the restaurants along Session Road that have witnessed the transformation of the city through the years.

You don't need to line up at the check-out counter with your vacuum-packed stale vegetables – you can get them fresh at the city market where every single carrot, potato and tomato was picked, cleaned and offered by hands that came from generations of vegetable farmers who have tended the same farms through the years. Get lost in the aroma of freshly ground Benguet, Kalinga or Sagada Coffee. Have your pinikpikan chicken prepared right before your eyes just the way it's supposed to be done.

Treasure the sight of sunflowers that begin to bloom in November, smell the pine-scented smoke coming from a freshly swept yard, pick-up a pine cone and see that tiny pine nut and wonder how that glorious tree hovering over you can came from something so small, so fragile, and imagine what you can do to protect it.

These are just some of the things that make Baguio… Baguio: taken for granted, ignored, buried under tons of uncollected garbage and smog, hidden behind newspaper headlines, unheard of amid the din of political, commercial and industrial noise.

Hush, clean up the mess and all these things will come back to the surface, revealing the real image of a city we all love.

It's so true: You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.