Rationale and Objectives

The thrust of the Urban Studies Program is to bring to the fore the critical issues around urbanization and urban humanity in the policy discourses for the country. It brings together studies on cities especially with acute vulnerabilities such as coastal cities across the Philippines that directly respond to emerging concerns on urbanism with a specific lens on inclusive and just resilience framework. It highlights the uneven impacts of disasters and adaptation mechanisms, and the often ignored tensions and fragmentations between technocratic infrastructure solutions and community deliberations and perspectives, especially in the strategic allocation of resources, infrastructure, and services to not only optimize space and reinforce infrastructures but also to ensure the well-being of residents and avoid displacements while rehabilitating and promoting the environment. It aims to revisit and take stock on the intersections between underdeveloped institutions and human resources for urban planning, the political dynamics anchored on territorial scales and jurisdictions of accountability in the context of metropolitanization and urban agglomeration, and the fundamental questions of cultural identity, citizenship, and solidarity in urban communities for resilience.

The program envisages to produce a compendium of urban research projects produced by three constituent units of the University of the Philippines System from the Visayas and Mindanao with their representative project leaders and fellows that look into key urban issues and concerns of their respective cities in the regions.