MEDIUM RARE 

Baguio, the summer capital. Why does everyone feel good when they’re in the “city of pines”?

It must be the trees which, long after summer, continue to provide shade, an assurance of ever-green. Without those trees, pine or something else, Baguio would be like any other “highly urbanized” town or city. 

People from the lowlands dream of working, living, retiring in Baguio. It’s the perfect place for a vacation. Hmm, do Baguio residents feel like they’re on vacation even when they’re working just like the rest of us, eight hours a day? 

People like me like Baguio because it has a smaller population than most of our cities in the NCR except maybe San Juan. With fewer cars, traffic is more manageable except when the creep and crawl is caused by visitors from the NCR in their vehicles.

A dream vacation is easier on the imagination with Baguio in the picture, unless one is dreaming of Batanes. Baguio’s main assets are its parks and public gardens, but neighborhoods with lots of shade trees continue to thrive in areas that are kept strictly residential, so it must mean authorities enforce zoning regulations?   

Baguio is a city but it gives off a different vibe, milder, kinder. Besides the trees, it helps that there must be fewer persons per square kilometer – or is that an illusion? Even if it were, Mayor Benjamin Magalong has seen the future and it will be born in the district of Tuba. Waiting for the city of tomorrow to come into full bloom, the mayor wants Baguio to be a smart city. Part of his office looks like a war room, featuring a wall-to-wall array of multiple screens behaving like Big Brother on the lookout for criminals and petty offenders, even jaywalkers.

There are bits and pieces of Baguio that are no longer fun, however. Session Road, for example, and the “palengke,” once a must for tourists, spell traffic on the road plus where to park? Mines View Park has seen happier days. The Good Shepherd’s shelves need restocking. The quiet places, thankfully, continue to stay quiet and green: Brent School, the Pink Sisters’ convent, and our latest discovery, a cozy bookstore named mt cloud.