Can we eat subdivisions?

THAT the largest and most ambitious real estate development of the late 20th century in my province was undertaken by one of the country’s real estate giants on a former hog farm remains a testament to the once-dominant role of hog farming in Pampanga’s economy. Hog farms big and small were everywhere in Pampanga: in the remote rural areas, in rapidly urbanizing areas coveted by the real estate giants listed on the stock exchange, in areas zoned as “agro-industrial” — and thereby fit for agri-business undertakings such as commercial poultry and piggery — but ringed by residential areas.

That ambitious 35-hectare development now hosts a high-end mall, a major car dealership, a city hall and, on top of a sprawling residential subdivision, the pioneering condo project in North Luzon, the first one north of Metro Manila and Bulacan province. Condo units in a former hog farm and in a province just a few decades removed from its feudal and agrarian roots was on the surface a marketing disaster. But overseas roadshows held across key US cities to sell the condo units worked like magic — the units sold out briskly like proverbial hotcakes.