by: Jehnie Au P. Namacpacan
To walk through Dumaguete today is to feel a quiet, heavy heartbreak.
Whether you have lived here your whole life or you are a returning local, the feeling is the same: the Dumaguete we knew is dead. This is now starting to become a stranger’s home. The warmth of the people is still here, but the physical soul of the city is slipping away.
Look at Rizal Boulevard. It used to be a quiet coastal strip where we could just look at the open sea and breathe. I used to sit at Sans Rival Bistro and watch the waves crash against the seawall, but the expanded boulevard now isolates us from the water, from that same seat, you only see pavement, not the sea. Despite it hosting events and serving the masses, it feels completely like a stranger. It is no longer a place for nature and quiet moments, and it simply doesn’t feel like home anymore.
Dumaguete is facing a massive identity crisis. Yes, it is a university town, and its rapid growth comes from the beautiful, diverse mix of students and cultures drawn to its schools. Urbanization is happening, and change is inevitable. But does progress really have to mean erasure?
Right now, we are letting our history be torn down. Old heritage houses, homes that watched our grandparents grow up, walls that hold the cultural identity and memories of this city are quietly being demolished to make room for modern commercial spaces. Every time an old building is demolished, a piece of who we are Dumagueteños goes with it. We are falling for a dangerous lie that to build tomorrow we have to destroy yesterday.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can modernize without losing our charm. Why do we feel the need to copy big, congested, suffocating metropolises? Is it really necessary to have towering skyscrapers in a small, gentle city like Dumaguete?
True progress isn’t about just building modern. It is honoring the stories written in wood and stone. We can allow the city to grow economically without the need for skyscrapers. Dumaguete’s urbanization can be done while respecting our historic scale and keeping the sky wide open. Instead of demolishing ancestral houses, why don’t we conserve them? We can retrofit them into vibrant spaces for students, local art hubs, or homegrown cafes.
Instead of skyscrapers, why not enforce a strict height limit so they do not overshadow our heritage and culture? And instead of allowing a modernized commercial strip on the Rizal boulevard, why were there no ordinances requiring new buildings to mimic our historic facades? Looking at Balay na Dako, the Teves ancestral house beautifully preserved and turned into a commercial space, proved that progress and heritage conservation can coexist perfectly. Why wasn’t that standard enforced for the rest of the boulevard? We could have grown economically while keeping our visual identity completely intact.
Saving Dumaguete’s culture is a choice, and it is a choice we need to make right now before it is too late. The charm of Dumaguete shouldn’t be rewritten just to fit a city like Bonifacio Global City or IT Park, Cebu. If we keep tearing down our history just to look “modern,” we will soon wake up in a city that looks like every other city, but feels nothing like Dumaguete at all.
Our heritage is not an obstacle to progress; it is our anchor. We must build a future that stands on the shoulders of our past, not on top of its ruins.
