BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—Piles of garbage on street corners, squatters on deforested hillsides, and early morning smog do not suggest that the 100-year-old Baguio is suffering from “urban decay,” according to a Senate inquiry looking into the state of the summer capital.

But these conditions are sufficient for the committee to conclude that the American-built city is “certainly getting there,” said Senator Rodolfo Biazon, chairman of the Senate committee on urban planning, housing, and resettlement.

Biazon chaired the inquiry at the Baguio City Hall on behalf of Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who filed Senate Resolution 1150 to address the problems raised in a series of Philippine Daily Inquirer reports on Baguio, which is celebrating its centennial this year.

He said the international standards defining urban decay do not fit Baguio’s condition. He said the city has not fallen into “disrepair and decrepitude,” nor has it suffered “economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, crime … and inhospitable city landscapes.”

He said Baguio’s phenomenal growth into an economic powerhouse in Northern Luzon in only 100 years belied the conclusions made by the reports.

But residents who attended the hearing said it was not Baguio’s progress they find threatening, but its diminished resources.

Former city architect Joseph Alabanza said at the Senate inquiry that Baguio has exceeded its capacity to serve its residents efficiently.

Because of uncontrolled migration and population growth, Baguio is unable to supply every resident enough water or shelter, as the city was designed only for 25,000 in 1909, he said.

“Maybe it’s not urban decay but urban uglification [that should worry us],” said Catherine Arvisu de la Rosa, a travel agency owner whose family belongs to the original residents invited to settle here by the American colonial government.

Virgilio Bautista, chairman of the Baguio Centennial Commission, told Biazon: “Baguio is not what it used to be and neither [is it] what we want it to be.”

What policy makers should focus on is how Baguio can enforce “smart growth,” and propagate a “new kind of urbanization,” instead of following in the footsteps of other urban centers like Metro Manila, said experts in a recent forum organized by the University of the Philippines Baguio.

Arturo Corpuz, vice president of the Ayala Land Inc., discussed various growth models at the forum to explore how development in Baguio for the next 100 years could spawn “social and spatial equity.”

He said growth could still result in a city where “things operate inefficiently.”

Biazon said population and migration are factors for which no government has any complete control.

He threw in the Senate’s support for a metropolitan sharing scheme involving a new metropolis composed of Baguio and its neighboring Benguet towns of La Trinidad, Itogon, Sablan, Tuba, and Tublay (BLISTT).

Biazon said the Senate could contribute by creating a bill that would form its governing agency.

The scheme, called BLISTT, assumes that the state of Baguio’s development has exceeded its carrying capacity and it is up to its neighboring communities to shoulder some of this growth.