Protecting heritage zones

“Does your country have strict zoning laws?” a friend’s foreign guest asked me after she visited, and was impressed, by Fort Santiago in Intramuros.

 “Do we even have zoning laws?” I wanted to reply facetiously. I decided that I was going to support my friend’s efforts to show her guest the best of the Philippines and said that we do have zoning laws to protect heritage areas. That would be true for Intramuros, anyway. Presidential Decree No. 1616 created the Intramuros Administration, an agency “responsible for the orderly restoration and development of Intramuros as a monument to the Hispanic period of Philippine history.”  It is mandated to “ensure that the general appearance of Intramuros shall conform to Philippine-Spanish architecture of the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century.”

 Under Sec. 12 of Republic Act No. 10066 or the National Cultural Heritage Act, the power to designate heritage zones is granted to the National Museum and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines in consultation with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board. The designation of a heritage zone is meant to protect the historical and cultural integrity of a geographical area.  Local government units are in charge of maintaining a heritage zone. They could do this by enacting ordinances requiring adaptive reuse of buildings in the area and maintaining the area’s appearance as close as possible to its appearance at the time the area was of most importance to Philippine history.

 I thought of my friend’s guest and her question when I read about the protests about the building of flyovers in Cebu. One of the issues raised was how the flyover would affect Asilo de la Milagrosa and other heritage buildings along Gorordo Avenue. The controversy also revealed conflicts on how land should be used given the changes in the number of people, motor vehicles, and buildings in the city. The problem is made more complicated by climate change.

 As a child growing up in Cebu City in the 1980s, I remember being able to go to Colon Street, run errands, and be back home in an hour or less to my house in the Sambag area. Except for the place where Tabo sa Banay was, I could walk along Colon’s sidewalks without bumping into anyone.

 I remember being in Grade 1 and having to walk home from my school in Pelaez Extension because it was raining hard and all the jeepneys were full. In some areas along P. del Rosario Street, my aunt and I sloshed along ankle-deep water. That was my idea of flooding in Cebu, not the waist-deep flood that seems to be occurring more often now and videos of which get posted in YouTube.

 The Local Government Code celebrated its twentieth anniversary last October. It means that it has also been that long since local government units (LGUs) were required to prepare multi-sectoral development plans, comprehensive land use plans, and integrated zoning ordinances. It is possible that these documents were actually prepared but have not been implemented. Throughout the country, I keep hearing about how a new set of local officials would ignore such plans because their rivals were responsible for drafting them.

 Several groups have come forward to volunteer to help craft the transport and land use master plan for Metro Cebu. I am keeping my fingers crossed and hope that a good one is prepared before the passage of another twenty years.  At the very least, it should identify heritage zones significant to local history. For now, I will be happy with the identification of Cebu’s heritage structures and LGUs taking steps to protect them.

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