GLADYS VERGARA, incumbent Baguio Tourism Council head, has a two-word rallying cry for sustainable development to endure.“Disperse development!” she advocated, recognizing how city life has become defined by a sense of mobility focused in Baguio’s central business district.

Fresh from a tourism tour of the city outskirts, she noted that development in the areas visited “are too sparing and feeble” to induce socio-economic growth.

“There is too much growth concentrated in the commercial sections of the city, while development in the outskirts seems slow and too laid back,” she noted in shared anguish.

“Moving development into the far-flung areas shall induce incentive among their residents, while distributing the seeds of growth there,” she further pointed out.

Vergara identified thickly populated barangays like Irisan, Asin and Loakan as worthy enough for development to take firm roots for its benefits to be shared in equitable proportion.

“City life is not what happens in the central business area,” she said, but what drives growth in its totality, stressing the need to disperse development into the city’s outskirts.

“Growth momentum in these populous areas must be accelerated to spread out the benefits of a strong economy where city folks living away from the core get to experience sustainable development,” she stressed.