DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/ 08 Jan) – The city’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) for the next 10 years should ensure sustainability by considering both ecology and economic development, environment group Interface Development Interventions (IDIS) said.
“Sustainable development should also ensure improving livability of the city, which means all its projects should contribute to improving the quality of life of the people and not just focus on building infrastructures,” IDIS executive director Chinkie P. Golle said on Tuesday.
As part of a technical working group, Golle said she hopes to have a meaningful and substantial participation in reviewing and drafting a new CLUP along with other civil society groups.
She said they want the revised CLUP to consider both emerging and ongoing massive developments in the city to ensure sustainability.
“It should cover the aspirations and goals of the LGU (local government unit) and all the Dabawenyos,” she said.
Davao City Planning and Development Office head Ivan Cortez said they are eyeing to complete the revision of the 2013 to 2022 CLUP before May 2019 and submit the draft to the 18th City Council for approval before it will adjourn on June 30, 2019.
He said they would start with the first of the five modules after the visioning exercises this week to allow stakeholders from various sectors to give inputs for the drafting of the land use plan because it “should be an agreed direction by all sectors.”
The city government has allocated some P4 million to conduct the workshops and consultations, he said.
The official said he is optimistic the draft will be completed in five months because the technical working group will not start from scratch as they will use the existing 2013-2022 CLUP as a working draft for the 2019 to 2028 CLUP.
“It’s more on updating but if we will follow the guidebook of the HLURB (Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board) we will touch on everything, but those that are still applicable we will continue what’s applicable then improve on gray areas,” he said.
In her State of City Address on October 2, 2018, Mayor Sara Duterte announced the revision and updating of the CLUP to “incorporate emerging initiatives, and provide parameters and guidelines for land use, transportation, parking, economic development, infrastructure, and transit.”
Cortez said they need to revise the CLUP to prevent people from circumventing the law due to its loopholes and “gray areas” that were overlooked.
“For us, what we want is how to make our zoning ordinance implementable in a sense that you will have no gray areas anymore, and no areas open for different interpretations,” he said.
He cited, for instance, that there are industrial companies complaining because their location had been classified as residential after the approval of the ordinance in 2014.
“There are cases wherein an industrial company was operating in a site before the approved zoning ordinance declared as residential… There are areas that if you will implement the ordinance to the letter, the land owners will have no options because the implementation of the zoning ordinance is by coordinates. Their plot of land that’s situated within the coordinate that is intended for a specific use and that which is not in line with their businesses, they will have no choice,” he said. (Antonio L. Colina IV/MindaNews)