Participatory Planning and Governance in Naga City, Philippines

This 6-credit hands-on, interactive, studio-style and community-based course is structured as a mutual learning experiment for students and the Naga City planners and residents. Naga, a mid-size city of 150,000 residents in Bicol region, central Philippines, is the site of an internationally renowned “best practice” in democratic planning and governance in the last 18 years. Since political decentralization was used as a tool in building local government capacity after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, Naga City has been creating and implementing various mechanisms to involve local organized groups, particularly from the marginalized sectors of society, in governing the city.  Its highly functional People’s Council and various Special Bodies have been dealing pro-actively with local governance issues – from social housing for the poor to creating sustainable social enterprises, from addressing school board governance to using new information communication technologies in creating closer relations between the people and the city government.  Naga City also spearheaded the creation of the Metro Naga Development Council (MNDC) to deal with regional development issues facing Naga City and nearby municipalities and develop better inter-jurisdictional forms of cooperation. This long history of state-civil society engagement and strong leadership continuity make Naga City an ideal “productive laboratory” for examining the possibilities and challenges of democratizing planning in a rapidly growing and complex city environment.

STUDENTS:

Paola Cassaigne, Claudia Bialostosky, Jeff Chase, Jeff Deby,Megan Faulkner, Holly Foxcroft, Celine Fung, Dan Gerson, Kathryn Hill, Charlotte Humphries, Allison Jones, Kaitlyn Kamierowski,Lang Lang, Diana Leung, Alejandra Lopez, Brady Martin, RJ McCullogh, Cathy Pasion, Kathryn Quinnelly, Marion Thomas.