Affordable housing via transit-oriented development

The “Build, build, build” program has opened a great opportunity to reduce the massive lack of affordable housing that previous administrations failed to solve. One major project under the program is the North-South Commuter Railway (NSCR), a mass transit system with 35 stations stretched over four provinces from Clark International Airport in the north to […]

Returning home to Taal

With the Philippine Institute on Volcanology and Seismology lowering the alert level of Taal Volcano to level 3 and the exclusion zone reduced from a radius of 14 km to 7 km, nearly a million evacuees have started to return to their homes and farms, two weeks after they fled their towns when the country’s […]

Manila Bay: beyond the cleanup

The recently launched cleanup of Metro Manila’s “toilet bowl” has been long overdue. It actually would not have been needed if only its care and management were not fragmented as it is. There are 5,714 barangays in 178 cities and towns in seven provinces (Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, Bulacan, Pampanga, Bataan and Zambales) in three regions […]

Making MM inclusive, competitive, sustainable

Metro Manila (MM) is the 18th largest megacity in the world, and one of the fastest growing in Asia. In 2015, it recorded a nighttime population of 12.88 million, which balloons to around 15 million at daytime. It is also the most crowded region of the Philippines, with a density of 20,785 persons per hectare. […]