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A City Left to Rot

Travelling within Tagbilaran City is such a trouble and a great discomfort that I would rather stay at home than go somewhere else.   If I have a choice, I wouldn’t go to the city centre where the banks are located or report to my office at Step Up Consulting Services.   It would seem that as I drive, I can hear the shriek and the cry of the poor car coupled sometimes with my son’s loud “ouch” when I hit a pothole large enough to have his head banged against the windows. Every person who lives in Tagbilaran City will understand when I say that Tagbilaran nowadays seems like a city left to rot.   I highlight three reasons below why I say so. POINT 1 .   Tagbilaran roads are outrageously bad , the streets within the city center are dirty caused by mud on rainy days or by dust when the sun is out.   If you live somewhere in Janssen Heights and would like to go to the St. Joseph Cathedral, you can never have a smooth ride except when you travel through the Dampas-Mansasa Road down

How do you help the Boholano farmer?

Since economic reforms started to be implemented in developing countries in the 1980s, there has been a vigorous debate over the nature of the changes brought by market liberalisation and de-regulation, and over their results. As the debates over ‘getting the prices right’ and ‘appropriate incentives’ subsided by the early 1990s, the discussion moved towards, on one hand, the discussion of the role of globalisation in economic restructuring, and, on the other hand, of issues of institution building and good governance. Generally, the literature has focused on issues either at the international, regional, national or sectoral levels. While these debates have generated key insights, relatively little has been said on commodity-specific dynamics of change and on the possibilities (and the limitations) of economic upgrading for developing countries offered by specific markets. In local economies as Bohol, while there were a lot of discussions and interventions in the sphere of agr

(De)constructing Development: Political Spaces and Geographical Boundaries in Tourism Planning

 Undated aerial photo of Alona Beach, from www.alonabeach.co . I was reminded of tourism planning, as an aspect of the climate change debate, when I attended a conference on Climate Change and Development Policy in Helsinki last 28-29 September 2012 at the invitation of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research.   One of the sessions highlighted the need to decongest spaces and make towns and cities compact for purposes of energy efficiency, carbon footprint reduction, and climate change mitigation, recognizing that cities than the rural places, are the largest emitters of carbon dioxide.   While the argument was done in the context of cities, I believe it is also applicable to the pseudo-cities, or those I call spaces where the characteristic of cities (population density and intense requirements of sanitation, utilities, housing, and transportation) are prevalent and where there is a need to ensure that proper planning and development

Who Leaves? Who Stays? The Migration of the Young and the Future of this Province

OFWs at the airport. Courtesy of antipinoy.com I sat beside a good friend of mine, a former student, and a former associate of my consulting firm Step Up Consulting Services, in one of my regular plane rides to Bohol one sunny weekend.   We talked about many things but one thing that stayed on me until now is the realisation that several of my students are already out of the country to permanently live and work elsewhere.   She herself is starting her own process of migrating and even encouraged me to do so.   She said, “I already lost hope in this country”. It’s disturbing to hear these statements from exemplary young people whom we need in order to make that big turn-around in this country. It is already even disappointing to see them leave Bohol and work elsewhere as their competencies are those that we need in several public and private entities within the province.   Our human resources are one of our greatest assets and watching Boholanos leave the province, much mo