BCDA plans $5-B ‘Green City’

MANILA, Philippines - The Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) is preparing to launch before the year ends a $5-billion development project that will transform a sizeable chunk of the Clark reservation into a fully automated, state-of-the-art metropolis to be known as “Green City”.

It will have all the amenities of a modern city where all services are fully automated, said BCDA president and CEO Arnel Paciano Casanova.

The entire area will cover 35,000 hectares which is a little more than half of Metro Manila’s 63,000 hectares. Within the area is an urban core that will occupy around 8,800 hectares, Casanova said.

He said the planned development will consist of five nodes: government center, central business district, academic center, agro-industrial area and eco-tourism and wellness area.

The proposed government center is a one-stop-shop that will have access to all records so that any and all transactions with the government can be processed under one roof using an integrated system.

This will mean substantial savings in both time and money for citizens who are applying for a passport or even just a birth certificate, Casanova said.

At the heart of the “Green City” is a central business district that will provide a fully-automated system of delivering basic services powered by ICT, he said.

The academic center will be so automated that students can attend classes while lying down in a hospital bed or at home, Casanova continued. This will be made possible through the use of modern technology which will allow the student to listen to the professor’s lecture and participate in class recitations even without being physically present in the classroom, he added.

In fact, he said an arrangement can be made so that lectures being delivered by a professor in Harvard will be beamed live to a classroom in the ”Green City” thereby allowing students to get a Harvard education without having to go to the United States.

There will also be an agro-industrial center where crops will be grown to supply the needs of the residents in and around the area which Casanova estimates to number anywhere from 20 to 25 million which represents the population of Central and Northern Luzon.

The fifth node is an eco-tourism area that is very accessible such that a resident who lives in an urban setting can go hiking in an upland area in less than 15 minutes, Casanova said. City residents need not be deprived of clean and fresh air, he added.