I MET Cardo near the foot of the new Bucana bridge, where the asphalt of the Coastal Road meets the salt air of the Davao Gulf. He was sitting on a plastic crate, repairing a net he hadn’t cast in weeks. Further away, the hum of passing vehicles sounded like an erratic heartbeat, and the heat sizzled happily.
”Davao is getting taller,” he said, squinting at the buildings along Roxas Avenue.
In the last ten years, our city has undergone visible changes in its landscape in terms of infrastructure and way of doing things.
We see it in the slow phase-out of the iconic jeepney for the High Priority Bus System—a move toward the ease of transportation that has burdened students and workers, but which has, on the other hand, diminished the moving folk art of our streets.
We see it in the Coastal Road, which has turned our city’s face toward the sea and gave us the beauty of the Samal Strait while placing a physical barrier between the water and the fishing communities who have been its stewards for generations.
Historically, as the elders would say, Davao was a “radial” town – business and personal activities bled into the center of San Pedro and Santa Ana. Today, we are witnessing the rapid shifting toward a more multi-centered development.
We no longer dance to the beat of one heart; we now have many unique centers that can stand on their own.
From the university towns in the north to the industrial hubs in the south, the city is breaking into self-contained pods of efficiency.
I stumbled across the word Palimpsest and asked Architect Gloryrose Dy what this means in relation to the city. She said it is seeing the urban fabric as a narrative. It is defined as a piece of parchment where the old writing is scraped away to make room for the new, yet the faint traces of the original script remain.
In the city, one can find the “old writing” in the pungent scent of overripe durian at Bankerohan, or in the heritage trees standing along Dakudao Avenue, watching over a growing urban landscape.
During the recent Throwback Thursday organized by the Davao Historical Society, Architect AJ Verga was asked how she imagines the future of Davao City. She said that the city should be a co-created space with communities being part of its development concept, using nature-based solutions and eco-conscious resources to make it sustainable. She said “sustainability is also about designing for what people care to keep.”
The impact on our lives is also measured in Social Capital. When a coastal community is relocated to a land-based housing project, they don’t just lose a view; they lose the invisible net of neighborly support that kept them afloat.
Cardo eventually put down his net. “The road is smooth,” he admitted, watching a cyclist glide past. “It’s beautiful. I just hope there’s still a place for a man with a boat in a city built for buses.”
As we move toward “Smart City” status, our challenge is to ensure that progress doesn’t become a process of erasure. The only development that truly matters is the kind that remembers the people who laid the first stones.
