From Global City to ‘Smart City’

Traffic was its usual crawling pace as payday coincided with Thank God, it’s Friday (T.G.I.F.) gimmicks that night. After waiting for almost an hour, my dinner appointment finally arrived at The Spiral, the popular buffet restaurant of the Hotel Sofitel in Roxas Boulevard, Pasay City.

After much apology, he finally settled at the couch and told me he just got a field report from his staff that an explosion ripped through the Two Serendra in Bonifacio Global City in Taguig. So before being irritated by his tardiness, the news editor in me immediately kicked in and alerted our central news desk about the developing story, called our STAR reporters and photographers to proceed to the explosion site.

I had no doubt it was not a rumor but A-1 information. The source was credible, no less than the president and chief executive officer of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) Arnel Paciano Casanova. Naturally, the BCDA chief must be informed of anything that happens within their jurisdiction.

This is because the BCDA is the government agency that manages the former military lands that were privatized and converted into commercial/residential uses. The BCDA serves as the corporate arm of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to raise funds for its multi-year modernization program.

And one of these former military real estate properties include the former Fort Bonifacio, now called Bonifacio Global City where the BCDA is currently locked in a legal battle with one of its newest locator, the newly inaugurated SM Aura Premier Mall. This involves the P5-billion claims that the BCDA is trying to collect from SM Aura as proceeds from the sale of the former military land property that under the country’s laws must accrue to the AFP modernization program.

As Commander-in-chief of the AFP, President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III certainly wants to raise much-needed funds for the long-delayed military modernization program. With a lot bullies claiming Philippine territorial waters, Casanova quipped, the AFP needs all the funds to modernize its arsenal to put up at least a semblance of not being a pushover.

Aside from this, he admitted there is also another case pending that was filed by SM against BCDA involving yet another property also at Bonifacio Global City. Since these cases are pending before the courts, our discussion on these matters was all off-the-record.

Moreover, it’s also because the people in higher office told the BCDA chief to stop talking to the media about these cases. Thus, he had to back out from a full-blown press conference he called last week.

There is one big project though that Casanova is more excited to talk about. This is the proposed “Smart City” that the BCDA will soon develop at the former American military airbase in Clark Field in Angeles City, Pampanga. They will start to undertake this project after the BCDA got the go-signal from President Aquino to proceed with its master planning.

Aside from the Smart City, he disclosed that BCDA is also deep into drawing up master plans for the conversion of several other idle military lands like those in Camp Aguinaldo in EDSA, Quezon City; Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija; and those in Visayas and in Mindanao. The military headquarters that will be uprooted will be relocated under one complex. The idea is to put up a “Pentagon-like complex” to house under one roof the three major services commands of the AFP, namely, Army, Air Force, and the Navy, Casanova revealed.

According to Casanova, the proposed Smart City envisions the creation of a new metropolis outside the national capital region in Metro Manila. It is called Smart City, he explained, because it will be an “ICT-enabled” metropolis. ICT stands for information communication technology.

As ICT-enabled, he said, the entire area will be wifi-connected and all the utilities will be inter-connected from telephone to water and power as well as traffic and security under one integrated system. The idea of developing Smart City is inspired by the success of Songdu in Itchon, South Korea, he admitted.

At the hub of the planned Smart City is the Clark Freeport that encompasses only about 4,000 hectares of land out of the total of 34,000 hectares of the entire Clark sub-zone. This stretch of land is from Clark Freeport to Crow Valley in Tarlac in Region 3.

“We need a new metropolis, a different urban center. Metro Manila cannot sustain the economic growth like the 7.8 percent that we just had for the first quarter of this year,” Casanova pointed out. “The Smart City would be an economic driver of the region.”

From rough estimates, he said, it will cost as much as $5 billion to undertake the Smart City project with this magnitude. Since this is a big project and capital intensive, Smart City will be included under P-Noy’s PPP, or Public-Private Partnership bidding for both interested local and international companies, he said.

The BCDA would formally present first the proposed Smart City development project, he said, before the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) that is chaired by the President. “President Aquino loves the idea. He expects us to finalize the master plan for presentation to the NEDA,” Casanova said.

Once approved, the BCDA will bid out this year the master plan for the Smart City project and implement this phase by phase as it involves huge tracts of land. Like the Bonifacio Global City, he noted, the proposed Smart City project will take years to develop.

Like other master plans, he stressed, the development of Smart City will be guided by certain restrictions on the use of these lands. One of which, he cited, is precisely the legal dispute between the BCDA and SM Aura now pending in courts.

Casanova cited the Global City has its own master plan that is 25 percent developed to-date. He said only the 300-hectare Global City is developed while 500 hectares more of the adjoining military lands in the area are still undeveloped. “If our economy grows this year, by ten years the Global City will be fully developed and the entire city will be built up,” Casanova pointed out.

But for now, the BCDA is off to build a new dream metropolis taking off from Global City to a Smart City.