Urban Studies Program - UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies

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.

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Urban Peripheralization in Metro Cebu’s Coastal Development and Risk Adaptation

This project examines how peripheralized communities navigate the consequences of reclamation, coastal development, including risk mitigation projects, how resilience is enacted through everyday practices, and how good governance can be reimagined toward distributional justice and sustainability. We aim to:

identify and map the sites of peripheralization amid Metro Cebu’s coastal development and risk adaptation;
document the lived experiences of peripheral communities affected by reclamation, coastal development and risk adaptation; and analyze patterns and mechanisms of community resilience, and how resilience operates as both adaptation and resistance within affected communities; and
analyze governance mechanisms and institutional constraints in addressing peripheralization in reclamation areas, and outline policy alternatives towards responsive and equitable land use

Revitalizing an Urban River: The Stakeholder Engagement and Coordination in Improving the Governance of the Iloilo-Batiano River System, Year 3: Identifying the appropriate collaborative management framework for the Iloilo-Batiano River Basin

This project continues with the gains of the first two years of the Iloilo Batiano River project. Based on the current findings, all relevant actors in managing the Iloilo-Batiano River recognize the need for updating the master plan. It was also revealed in the data that compliance of barangay-level LGUs with policies connected to improving the health of the river is still a challenge. In addition, there are also gaps in the regularity of LGU-private sector level policy input and consultation mechanisms.

The river management bureaucracy in Iloilo City LGU is far more advanced than that of the Municipality of Oton. This can affect big-tent collaboration, or the collaboration within the level of the Iloilo Batiano River Development Council (IBRDC), since there is a lack of parity between partner LGUs. To address this gap, it is necessary to review whether the Iloilo City setup can serve as a template for developing a small tent collaborative arrangement within the Municipality of Oton, either before the LGUs coordinate in the IBRDC or simultaneously with the revision of the Master Plan.

Finding Space: Stories of Sense of Belonging and Adaptation in Settlement and Resettlement Sites in Davao Region

The study will explore and analyze the lived experiences of residents in Philippines relocation sites particularly in Davao region, focusing on their narratives of belonging, adaptations, and community-building in the context of resettlement. Specifically, this study would:

1) policy analysis of each identified LGU on their individual housing relocation program;

2) document the personal and collective stories of residents regarding their relocation experiences;

3) examine the challenges faced by relocated communities in terms of livelihood, access to services, and social networks;

4) analyze how residents develop a sense of belonging and identity in their new environments;

5) identify strategies and forms of adaptation employed by individuals and families in relocation sites; and

6) provide insights that may inform more humane and inclusive housing and relocation policies in the Philippines.

FRICTIONS, FIXES, AND FUTURES: Articulating the Spatiality, Governance, and Potential Trajectories of Informal Settlements in Three UP Campuses

The entire UP system has vast land properties across its constituent campuses that have become home to thousands of informal settlers. Its flagship campus (UP Diliman), for instance, has an estimated 70,000 informal settlers occupying approximately 93 hectares—nearly 20 percent of the university’s total land area (Dovey and Recio, 2024). These communities are deeply woven into the socio-spatial fabric of the campus. Their presence reflects a complex, historically rooted phenomenon shaped by broader socio-economic trajectories, urbanization processes, housing crises, and persistent governance challenges. Many residents are long-term inhabitants—some even predating the formal establishment of the university. Others include university employees, students, transport workers, migrants, and their families—groups that provide vital but often undervalued services such as low-cost housing, cheap labor, affordable transportation, and retail to both the university and surrounding urban districts.

Despite the long-standing precarity of their situation—marked by the threat of eviction and relocation—residents continue to enact collective action initiatives to maintain their presence in the area, create a sense of belonging, deepen social cohesion, and engage in advocacy activities to push for housing rights and land tenure. At the same time, various UP units have been pursuing planning and management interventions to deal with issues surround the influx of informal settlers in different parts of university campuses.

This project will problematize these institutional interventions as well as grassroots organizing and rights-claiming practices in a context of unequal relations and precarious living conditions.

To expand the analysis, the research will particularly interrogate the spatiality, governance, and potential trajectories (through co-production/inclusive planning) of select informal settlements across three UP campuses: UP Diliman, UP Cebu, and UP Iloilo. It will employ archival research, mapping, ethnographic, fieldwork, interviews, focus group discussions, and observation to chronicle and analyze the evolving socio-spatial and material conditions on the ground, the existing modes of governance and institutional arrangements, and the prospects for collaborative, inclusive pathways for addressing the issues embedded in informal settlements. Results of the study can inform rights-based and gender-responsive policy framework and planning interventions that can be discussed with the UP administration and concerned local governments as well as relevant national government agencies.