EDITORIAL - First Singapore, now Melbourne too?

In a meeting with City Hall Department heads, barangay captains, and officials of different government agencies, Mayor Michael Rama, now back from his vacation in Australia, said he is now pushing for a Cebu City that is Singapore-like with aspects of Melbourne.

The vision is good as explained by his son, Mikel; a city with lots of green spaces, light vehicular traffic, a world-class public transport system, and an excellent solid waste management program, among others.

However, Cebu City is barely keeping up with its ambition to become Singapore-like, now we must endeavor to become like Melbourne as well?

Don’t get us wrong; it is good to aspire to be great. But those aspirations must also be grounded on or tempered with a healthy dose of reality.

And for now that reality is that while we strive to make parts of Cebu City like Singapore only cosmetically, our attitudes and discipline when it comes to the littlest things that go a long way to make our city livable and exemplary, and also when it comes to enforcing political will, remains third-world

We can never have green spaces if every free lot in the city is allowed to be taken over by “untouchable” squatter colonies, or if “urban planners” have no other plan than to populate the city with high-rise buildings. We can never have a public transport system people will want to ride if we prioritize only car owners on the road and in public spaces. We can never have an excellent solid waste management program if the people continue dumping trash everywhere in the street as well as our waterways.

For now, why not just aspire to make Cebu into the best version of how it is at the moment? There are some things that need to be improved without necessarily turning ourselves into Singapore or Melbourne. We are talking about the traffic situation, the improvement of public infrastructure, better urban planning, better enforcement of existing city ordinances regarding waste disposal, among others.

After the basics have been taken care of, then we can move on to turning ourselves into something like Singapore or Melbourne.