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.