18/10/2025
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1JJEetKGoc/?mibextid=wwXIfr
COMMENTARY | Baguio City Market: Redevelopment vs. "Mallification"
Long before Baguio became a postcard city, before SM and the cafes and the pine-themed condos, there was the market. The old palengke, muddy in the rainy months and noisy all year round, was the real center of town. It was where miners from Itogon traded gold flakes for sacks of rice, where farmers from La Trinidad carried their vegetables in woven baskets, where every Ibaloy, Ilocano, and lowlander found common ground under one leaky roof.
Old-timers still remember how it smelled after a downpour; mud, smoke, and the faint sweetness of freshly roasted peanuts and coffee. Vendors would call out prices over the sound of clanging tin roofs. Children played by the fish section while elders swapped stories about the war, or about the 1990 earthquake that split the city but spared the market. The market was messy, alive, human.
Now, that living heart is under review, literally. The Baguio City Council is on its 36th day of a 120-day review of the proposed Public Market Redevelopment Project. It’s a mouthful of bureaucracy for something that hits close to home. On paper, the project promises modernization and order. In reality, it’s shaping up to be a corporate takeover wrapped in the language of “progress.”
The plan puts SM Prime Holdings, Inc. in the middle of it all. City officials insist it’s the only way forward. The city doesn’t have the billions needed to rebuild. But people aren’t buying it. Outside City Hall, vendors and students have been holding silent protests, carrying placards warning against the “mallification” of their market. They’ve seen what happens when public spaces get “redeveloped”: rents rise, spaces shrink, and the people who made the place what it is get pushed out.
Anyone who’s walked the alleys of Hilltop or Hangar Market knows what’s at stake. Those tiny stalls, where families have sold rice, coffee, and ukay-ukay clothes for decades, aren’t just business spaces. They’re family legacies. Many of those vendors were born behind their stalls. Some inherited their small corners from parents who started trading there right after the war. These aren’t mere tenants. They’re stewards of a culture of trade that built Baguio’s identity long before investors came calling.
Sure, the market needs fixing. It’s old, fire-prone, and yes, chaotic. But disorder is not always a disease. The answer isn’t to erase the old market and replace it with another air-conditioned, uniformed, and corporatized structure. Iloilo and Cebu have modernized their markets without losing their soul keeping the small traders, upgrading infrastructure, and keeping it public. So why can’t Baguio do the same?
The irony is thick: a city known for its heritage, now entertaining the idea of surrendering its most historic public space to the country’s biggest mall developer. You can almost hear the ancestors of Kafagway sighing.
This market has survived fires, earthquakes, and countless city administrations. It has stood through decades of migration, modernization, and tourism booms. If it must change again, let it be in the hands of the people who have kept it alive, not those who see it as another profit line.
The council still has 84 days left to decide. Time enough to remember what the market really means and who it belongs to.
Redevelopment? Yes. Renewal? Absolutely.
But mallification? No.
The Baguio City Public Market doesn’t need to be sanitized or sold. It needs to be restored with dignity, with memory, and with the people who have always been its heart.
