BACOLOD City Mayor Evelio Leonardia said Wednesday that one of his priorities this year is to close the deal with architect and urban planner Felino Palafox Jr.
“We will still resolve to make the economy and the city as prosperous and as progressive, and this is one of my priorities, to get an urban planner for Bacolod. Doing this, I need the help and support from other sectors because we might not be able to afford Palafox on our own,” he said.
The mayor added that in December 2017, the Office of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez expressed interest to help Bacolod in hiring Palafox as the city’s urban planner.
The mayor noted that Alvarez’s chief of staff contacted him to discuss the matter to hire Palafox’s services.
“How we will exactly finance this, that is still a matter not so clear, but as much as possible I want to hire an urban planner,” Leonardia said.
He said that by hiring an urban planner, it will involve thinking on what to do with Bacolod in the next 80 years.
Leonardia noted that Palafox is one of the creators of the masterplan for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
“If we can use his brains to make Bacolod develop and grow, I think we will establish the road map and we can participate to think on what we are supposed to do here in the future. This is all together our effort, all the more I need the support and participation from everybody because nobody has a monopoly of good ideas and the more people participate, the better,” the mayor said.
Palafox had earlier said that Bacolod has a very high development potential, and noted the visionary leadership of the city officials like Leonardia.
Palafox, when informed that Bacolod will be celebrate its 80th anniversary in 2018, said the city should start thinking how Bacolod should be in the next 80 years.
“We could start re-thinking, re-imagining, re planning, re-engineering, re-architecture, remove, reduce, and recycle, re-develop and hopefully, we could have an urban renaissance,” Palafox told reporters during a telephone interview.
