FORMER president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said Pampanga is attracting the biggest property developers as the province emerges as Luzon’s next major growth corridor.
Arroyo branded the province’s growth center as Pampanga Golden Triangle, which is composed of three cities and six municipalities.
Arroyo, who also served as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, said development plans are underway to make Pampanga Golden Triangle the next megalopolis north of Metro Manila.
Arroyo earlier tapped renowned urban planner Felino Palafox Jr. to draft a development plan to transform 218,100 hectares across 19 municipalities and three cities in Pampanga into a megalopolis, starting with the Pampanga Golden Triangle.
“With Angeles and San Fernando cities as Pampanga’s main urban centers and the area’s relatively lower susceptibility to natural hazards, the Pampanga Golden Triangle signifies high development potential and could be the jump-off point for the larger development of the province,” said Arroyo, who represented the Second District of Pampanga in the House of Representatives.
Pampanga Golden Triangle consists of the cities of Angeles, San Fernando and Mabalacat as well as the municipalities of Porac, Floridablanca, Lubao, Guagua, Santa Rita and Bacolor. These cities and municipalities represent fast-growing as well as high-density settlements within Pampanga.
Clark Freeport and Clark International Airport will support the development of the Pampanga Golden Triangle as an international economic corridor.
The area is highly accessible by land through major thoroughfares such as North Luzon Expressway, Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway, McArthur Highway and Jose Abad Santos Avenue.
Arroyo said under its conceptual land use plan, Pampanga Golden Triangle will have integrated mass-transport systems including Bus Rapid Transit, a Light Rail Transit, wide roads with special lanes that promote walkability and bikeability, and a feeder system using medium-capacity vehicles.
The plan identifies priority areas as districts or nodes to ensure that the proposed land use will be orderly and can accommodate future growth.
Arroyo said among the priority investment areas are mostly poblacions, characterized by the presence of government centers, plazas, churches, residential and commercial areas.
The main goal of the plan is to revitalize these urbanized areas, organize the current land uses, identify new road connections and road improvement and create buffer zones along hazard-prone areas.
These could be the guidelines for future developments within the Pampanga Golden Triangle, according to Arroyo.
The area has recently received major investments such as industrial factories, shopping malls and commercial centers in Clark and San Fernando, hotels and resorts in Mabalacat City and Angeles City and residential projects of major developers in all the cities and towns of Pampanga Golden Triangle.
Developers present in the area include SM Prime, Robinsons Land, Ayala Land Inc., Rockwell Land, Megaworld Corp., Vista Land, Century Properties, Filinvest Land, Aboitiz Land and Landco Pacific Corporation.
Angeles City, one of the highly urbanized cities in Pampanga, is known for its commercial and industrial districts as well as heritage structures and ancestral houses.
With a population of 411,634 as of 2015, Angeles City has various growth centers in Balibago, Pampang, Anunas, Sto. Domingo, Sapang Bato, Pandan, Pulung Maragul, Abacan River Special Development Corridor and Angeles central business district.
San Fernando, the capital city with a population of 306,659 as of 2015, is the government center as well as the center for commerce and trading for the whole province. The city envisions itself as “habitat of human excellence” and has a land-use plan on a multinodal urban form to decongest the city proper and distribute economic activities to other urban growth centers and corridors.
These include the Poblacion growth center, central business district corridor, Maimpis-San Isidro-Quebiawan growth center, Bulaon growth center and Sindalan-Calulut-Dela Paz corridor.
Mabalacat City has 16,677 hectares that include the Clark Freeport.
Hotels, tourist information centers, and car rentals are mostly concentrated in Dau and Clark.
Tourism sites are accessible by land transportation.
Arroyo, who has been appointed as presidential adviser for Clark flagship projects, said the development of the major infrastructure projects will boost the status of Pampanga province as the “Gateway of Asia” to the Philippines.
