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The Need for Liveable Cities

The Need for Liveable Cities

Building local competitiveness is essential in boosting long-term national competitiveness. Cities are the primary movers of economic growth and innovation. They are hubs of consumption, resource use, and waste. They are also as generators of wealth, production, and development. However, in this increasingly urban world, today’s cities are facing new challenges. They have become the center of society’s most pressing economic, social, and environmental issues. They face issues on disaster preparedness, traffic congestion, lack of mobility and logistics options, delivery of public goods and services, and low global competitiveness.

For these reasons, we need to plan them better. The Philippines, which is a nation of islands, needs to establish multiple economic hubs—the cities—spread throughout the regions so that we can disperse inclusive growth, opportunities, and development.

 

OUR PROJECTS

Liveable Cities Labs is a platform for sharing good practices, innovation, appropriate technology, and a venue for sharing new solutions and forging new partnerships. The Labs are designed as a one-day panel discussion on a single theme. The Labs were originally planned as face-to-face workshops. However, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Labs were moved online through webinar sessions. 

Liveable Cities Dashboard. In order for cities to improve, they must be able to measure themselves. Thus, we created the Liveable Cities Dashboard to track and consolidate city data from multiple sources and display them to show insights, trends, and performance of a city. Local chief executives can now better assess their city and identify areas for improvement. For citizens and the private sector, it serves as a guide on where to locate and identify innovative ways for using public data to engage with their community.

Liveable Cities Health Dashboard  builds on the Liveable Cities Dashboard focusing on health especially related to Sustainable Development Goals, with more relevant indicators such as nutrition and disability. It offers more health information with more features for data presentation, and a dedicated view for NCR. The platform will engage stakeholders to push for integration of more data in order to help strengthen public health systems.

Liveable Cities Elections Dashboard  shows the number of registered voters by locality for the 2022 national and local elections in an interactive map. Registered voters can be selected by province, city or municipality or by legislative district, together with the population based on the official 2020 census, and except for districts, breakdown between male and female voters.

Liveable Cities Summit is the annual meeting of the project. The Summit is a one-day conference bringing local and international experts together to address issues and challenges in building and managing better cities. The 2019 Sustainable Cities Summit: Building Liveable Cities drew over 350 participants for a day-long series of panel discussions on city planning. In the future, Liveable Cities Summits will culminate with the Awards for the best designs in the Liveable Cities Design Challenge.

Liveable Cities Design Challenge is an annual urban planning and design competition for cities. Cities may choose from among the focus areas of the Challenge to design an entry for their city. Cities are required to establish competition teams headed by the Mayor and composed of city officials and local resources (citizens, professionals, and universities) from within their city. Cities may also tap into a roster of mentors developed by the Liveable Cities Philippines for additional expertise. Entries will be judged by a panel of experts and finalists will be invited to present and receive awards at the Annual Liveable Cities Summit.

Liveable Cities Innovation Challenge will be a program to search for technology innovation among start-ups which best address the key challenges that cities face in Mobility, Resilience, GovTech, Basic Services, Public Health, Education, and Business Continuity/Recovery. The best ideas and proponents will be invited to present to City Mayors for possible implementation in their Cities.
 

Dashboard

In order for cities to improve, they must be able to measure themselves. With this in mind, we created the Liveable Cities Dashboard. The dashboard tracks and consolidates city data from multiple sources and visually displays data to show insights, trends, and performance of a city.

Through the Liveable Cities Dashboard Local chief executives can now better assess their city and identify areas for improvement. For citizens and the private sector, it serves as a guide on where to locate and identify innovative ways of using public data to engage with their locality.

Through open data, the Liveable Cities Dashboard sets the groundwork in promoting transparency in local governments.

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Our Focus Points

Great cities are not built overnight. But we can get started. Through the Liveable Cities Challenge, we help mayors and key local officials develop comprehensive, replicable, and implementable solutions to improve the liveability of their cities while strengthening local communities in the process. The Challenge’s vision is an accelerated trend towards designing, building, and developing competitive, sustainable, and resilient Philippine cities.

The Liveable Cities Challenge aims promote and enable better urban planning and implementation for cities in the Philippines. The Challenge will be focusing on the following:

Education

During the quarantine period, regular classes have been curtailed and scheduled to resume under a modified academic calendar. However, on account of COVID-19, education will now have to be delivered online before face-to-face instruction resumes in the classroom. Cities will need to adapt to this new teaching and learning environment through online education. This will require telecommunications infrastructure, devices, course material, and training for both teachers and students.

Health

In this period of pandemic, public health and health services delivery have become more important components of city management. Cities must now be more adept at pandemic management and infection control, disease surveillance, testing, treatment, and contact tracing. Because our health delivery system has become devolved to local governments, the frontline of implementation has now moved to the city level.

Resilience

Located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and the typhoon belt, the Philippines is one of the most vulnerable and disaster-prone countries in the world which demands that cities be resilient against natural disasters and man-made hazards. The necessary infrastructure, facilities, and services are crucial to prevent severe damage during disasters and to sufficiently manage the aftermath. While natural calamities such as typhoons or earthquakes cannot be avoided, the degree of damage and human suffering can be reduced through advanced planning and robust recovery and backup systems.

Mobility

Rapid urban growth in the Philippines is an indicator of economic growth. However, urban expansion has brought a number of challenges for cities, many of them related to increased traffic congestion, escalating sprawl, and low availability of mass transit and mobility options.

Long-term strategic planning in this area should organize the day-to-day mobility needs of citizens, the logistics of businesses, and traffic flows in a way that values accessibility. Cities should match their mobility concept with their long-term development plan to enable and support desired strategic social, economic, and physical targets. A city transport system needs to be convenient, affordable, efficient, and accessible, including for PWDs and senior citizens who have special needs. Mobility options should include going on foot, bicycle, private vehicles, and mass transit.

Basic Services

Basic services are an integral component of human development and poverty reduction since it addresses the basic needs which are primary requirements for making a city liveable. These involve services such as electricity and energy, water and sanitation, refuse and waste removal, and telecommunications and internet services. A city’s basic services need to be affordable, sustainable, equitable, and accessible to all.

GovTech

GovTech can be a powerful tool for cities to improve their overall governance. Technology can help improve services, make purchasing and payment arrangements more efficient, and improve the ease of doing business. By improving cities’ capacity to provide services, achieve policy goals, and increase efficiency and transparency, GovTech encourages greater trust, participation, and engagement of citizens.

This can eventually lead to Intelligent or Smart Cities where technology can be used in the management of more services such as traffic management, law enforcement, emergency services, social services, health and education delivery, and other services.

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