Tale of two medieval Cebu cities

The banning of Mandaue City jeepneys from entering Cebu City or of Cebu City garbage trucks from passing through Mandaue City is similar to the medieval age practice of each town or village preventing traders to enter or pass through without paying. It hurts people and business.

How will the people of Mandaue enter Cebu City to work, study, get medical attention or transact business with the ban? By taking more jeepney rides, of course. Yet, even within Cebu City, many commuters also take two or more jeepney rides to reach their destination. Are not many people in Cebu City also working in Mandaue or transacting some business there?

If you commute by jeepney, you will know exactly what it is to take two or more rides to reach your destination, physically and financially. The problem of jeepney commuters lies in the way our jeepney or bus routes are established both within the city and between cities and towns. I remember that when the Metro Cebu Land Use and Transport Study (MCLUTS) office was still around, besides preparing the 20-year long term land use and transport plan for Metro Cebu, it sought a solution to current problems, like the traffic chaos in Cebu City. I think that the city-wide numbering of jeepneys according to route was its work. But they did that after an intensive study of the origin and destination of the commuters in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

It’s been 30 years since then and the situation in Metro Cebu is very much different. Yet we still follow almost the same old roads and the same old traffic routes. If we make a new origin-destination survey of commuters for the whole of Metro Cebu, not just for a specific route whenever a new mall is opened, I think it would help a lot in rationalizing our traffic routing plans and widening or building new roads without the need for more flyovers that destroy the cityscape. But who will make the study? Planning boards don’t even exist or function in our cities.

There is another problem. This concerns the mentality of our local officials. I would not say they are uneducated or have a low IQ but they are not educated about the role of a city and how it functions as an integrated economic unit and interacts with other cities, especially when they become highly urbanized with an extensive network of business activities.

A single city cannot function without the support of surrounding areas. More so with a group of adjacent cities or towns in a large metropolis. They must cooperate and support each other’s projects, policies or plans. Who is educating our city officials about intra-city and inter-city economics and the problems that come with rapid urbanization and economic development? I do not know but then they do not have to be masters of urban planning. Maybe it is just enough for them to know, from a seminar, for example, how the city works and what it means to be a city or being part of bigger metropolitan area, plus some knowledge about managing bureaucracy for results.

Mandaue bans Cebu City’s garbage trucks from passing through. Cebu City retaliates by banning Mandaue jeepneys from entering the city. What’s next? Anything could happen in a war between cities ruled by short-sighted people with misplaced priorities. If Cebu City can block jeepneys from Mandaue, what can stop Mandaue from banning all taxis and cars from Cebu City that go to the Mactan Airport? I hope we do not have to suffer this.

It is easy to say we can change our leaders come election time but it is hard to do. Our political system ensures only two things: either the inept incumbent is reelected or another political animal with the same mentality will replace him. We have many good people in business or in the academe, for example, who could probably manage our cities well but they won’t run because, without the money or machinery down to the grassroots level, they will surely lose.

It is frustrating but still I hope that one Election Day we may finally get someone like Jaime Lerner, an architect and urban planner, who made Curitiba City a model city not only for other cities in Brazil but also for other cities in the world, including our own Cebu City.

Did I say Lerner was elected mayor of Curitiba City? Not really at first. He was appointed mayor of the city in 1971 by the military dictatorship that seized power in 1964 and ruled Brazil until the mid-80s. He got elected only in 1989 after proving his skill to manage the city well.

Did I say Cebu City studied Curitiba? Former Cebu City Mayor and now Rep. Tomas Osmeña claimed he went to Curitiba to see how it works. Until he left City Hall last year, however, we have yet to see what he learned. Oh yes, the Bus Rapid Transit is coming which is modeled after Curitiba’s. But if you really study the City of Curitiba you will also know that everything they did, at least during the time of Lerner, was based on a city-wide, if not metro-wide master plan that Cebu City or Metro Cebu for that matter does not have or does not follow.

Moreover, Curitiba is famous not just for its efficient mass transport system but also for the management of its waste and parks, housing development and so forth. How did they do that? Our city officials who went to Curitiba should tell us.