A new study published in City and Built Environment provides a practical framework for turning climate policy into resilient urban design, focusing on Metro Manila's highly urbanized Pasig City and Makati City. The research, led by Professor Dina Cartagena Magnaye from the University of the Philippines School of Urban and Regional Planning, examines how smart urban governance can connect policy, institutional coordination, and architectural design to create climate-responsive developments. The findings address a critical gap: while climate-resilient city planning has gained attention, fewer studies have explored how governance mechanisms manifest at the building scale.
Urbanization is accelerating worldwide, increasing pressure on land, infrastructure, energy systems, and environmental quality. Cities also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, while dense urban districts face growing risks from flooding, heat stress, pollution, and disasters. In Metro Manila, these challenges are compounded by fragmented governance and difficulty translating climate policies into concrete projects. The study investigates how smart urban governance can guide decision-making from policy formulation to design outcomes, using a qualitative multiple-case study of a high-rise residential condominium, a commercial and office development, and a mixed-use project.
Data collection involved policy reviews, semi-structured interviews, and on-site observations. The analysis was organized across three levels: macro (policy and institutions), meso (institutional coordination), and micro (design and development). The study also applied four phases of community adaptation—fortification and defense, accommodation, retreat, and clean-up—as a lens for evaluating climate responses. Results showed that smart urban governance works best when inter-agency coordination, regulatory coherence, and stakeholder participation converge. In Pasig City, the residential development emphasized safety, social cohesion, open space, natural ventilation, and livability. In Makati City, the commercial and office project prioritized green architecture, energy efficiency, technology-enabled performance, and disaster preparedness. The mixed-use development adopted a balanced strategy integrating environmental management, mobility, and occupant comfort. Across all cases, policies and regulations translated into visible design features such as green infrastructure, flood- and seismic-risk measures, passive cooling strategies, open spaces, and adaptive spatial configurations.
The authors emphasize that climate resilience cannot be delivered by policy or design alone; it depends on everyday connections among planners, regulators, developers, local governments, and communities. Smart urban governance should be understood as a coordination model that helps cities translate climate goals into practical design decisions. In dense, risk-prone cities like Metro Manila, this means aligning building codes, land-use planning, environmental safeguards, and community needs before projects reach construction. The study offers guidance for policymakers, urban planners, architects, developers, and local governments in rapidly urbanizing regions. Building-scale projects can serve as active platforms for climate adaptation when supported by coherent regulation, institutional collaboration, and participatory planning.
The proposed framework can help evaluate whether development projects are not only compliant with rules but also aligned with resilience, sustainability, and public well-being. For Metro Manila and other Southeast Asian cities, this approach addresses the pressing question of how climate policy can move from planning documents into the buildings, streets, and public spaces where people live and work. The study was published with DOI 10.1007/s44213-026-00068-9 and supported by two RGC research grants (no. E-HKU702/17 and no. 17202618). Future research could extend the framework to other metropolitan regions using quantitative or mixed-method approaches to assess how governance coordination affects climate adaptation outcomes.
