It was sometime in 2019 when the City of Balanga sought the assistance of the University of the Philippines Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards (UP NOAH) Center to update their Local Climate Change Action Plan and Disaster Risk Reduction Management Plan. At that time, when words such as COVID-19, pandemic, and Zoom weren’t part of the public’s daily lexicon, the UP NOAH Center team set out, armed with table top activities and presentations, to conduct workshops that are prerequisites to formulating and updating local development plans. While this seemed like a typical beginning of a formal working partnership, neither parties had the slightest idea of the amount of adjustment a global pandemic would require.
A global outbreak and the beginning of a shared goal
Preliminary activities conducted for the formulation of Balanga’s development plans started pre-COVID-19. The formal partnership with the UP NOAH Center, however, officially started on December 20, 2020 at the height of a pandemic that halted almost all physical activity in the country. Given the emphasis on the participatory nature of planning, the inability of both parties to physically interact proved to be a challenge. What were once proven and tested approaches to data gathering were no longer viable. Field visits, which used to be an essential component of development planning, was out of the question. What was supposed to be a project that followed standard procedures became the perfect avenue to prove that, with willingness to adapt and adjust, a goal can be turned into reality.
Perhaps it was the City of Balanga’s vision of becoming a “Smart University Town”, which translated to an overall “Smart City” ethos, that made them transition to online methods willingly and with relative ease. Maybe it was because Balangueños have been primed to adapt to change that enabled them to stay above a shifting status quo. While birthing pains were unavoidable during the conduct of an online planning process, it was evident that the city moved with a shared goal – to see through the formulation of their Enhanced Comprehensive Land Use Plan, Comprehensive Development Plan, Local Climate Change Action Plan, Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan, Contingency Plan, and Public Service Continuity Plan.
For Balangueños post Corona
July 4, 2023 marked the symbolic conclusion of the project with the City of Balanga when representatives from the UP NOAH Center hand delivered finished project outputs to the city. Incidentally, only a few days after on July 22, 2023, the country’s state of emergency due to COVID-19 status was lifted nationwide. For a partnership that was incepted pre-COVID-19 and was conducted throughout the pandemic, an ending coinciding with the end of a global crisis seems favorable. Undeterred by restrictions, the city now sets out to implement goals embedded in their development plans with the same drive that saw them through the end of a challenging planning process, armed with the ingenuity required to adapt to a changing world.
