Urban Partnerships Project Philippines (UP Philippines) is a component of the International Urban Partnership Program (I-UPP). It is funded by a contribution from the Canadian Partnership Branch (CPB) of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). UPP Philippines will run from July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2009.

The development goal of CUI’s I-UPP is to make a Canadian contribution in advancing the implementation of the United Nations’ Habitat Agenda and Millennium Development Goals in cities of the south by connecting people, resources and ideas to build sustainable urban regions. It will focus on:

• Actions, by supporting southern partners to develop model approaches in enhancing urban governance and the public realm of cities as a contribution to the urban sustainability and poverty reduction objectives established in the Habitat Agenda and the Millennium Development Goals, and
• Ideas, by generating new knowledge products that advance thinking on urban sustainability and poverty reduction.

The norms of good urban governance established by UN-HABITAT will be used as guiding principles of our partnership program. Results expected by the end of the program (outcome level) include the following:

• Increased multi-stakeholder participation (women and men) in local governance and development.
• Enhanced capacity and leadership within local governments, community groups and sectors.
• Improved and more sustainable social, economic and environmental conditions for communities.
• Enriched body of knowledge about good urban governance practices available to countries where program is based, Canada and internationally.

The long-term result (impact level) of CUI’s program will be urban governance processes in partner countries refocused towards urban sustainability and poverty eradication.

In the Philippines, CUI is proposing a project that continues to pursue the theme of “making decentralization work.” CUI will lend the Institute’s support to the country’s continued thrust towards operationalizing the subsidiarity principles contained in the 1991 Local Government Code, which aims to build the capacity of local authorities for good governance and to empower communities in local decision-making. It will also place a new emphasis on localizing the MDGs within urban governance processes, helping to mobilize local authorities in the task ahead of realizing global poverty eradication goals. The geographic focus will be cities and urban regions across the Western Visayas (Region VI), which remains a priority area for intervention under CIDA’s Country Development Framework.

CUI will take a new approach which is founded on the principle set forth in the new program’s vision that the achievement of good urban governance, the creation of sustainable cities, the improvement of the quality of urban life and the eventual reduction of urban poverty all lies in the degree to which urban stakeholders pursue a collective agenda aimed at investing financial, social and institutional capital towards the improvements to the civic public realm and in the development of community assets.

The public realm refers to the ‘commons’, those resources that are shared by society at large and accessible to them. Education, health care, social services, public transit, energy resources, water and sewer infrastructure, arts and culture, public safety and security, justice, libraries, environmental stewardship, streets, sidewalks, public spaces, processes of governance and civic engagement are the connecting tissues linking our individual private urban worlds, fusing one generation to another. The public realm is the glue that holds a city together and the bedrock upon which it builds its prosperity, its communities and its social peace.

It is the civilizing ‘spaces’ (physical or otherwise) within our cities. While the room to maneuver for urban governments may be quite constrained by their current fiscal realities, how they use their power and resources and how they work with their communities and their social capital to promote the ‘public good’ and ‘public goods’ within cities can have a significant impact on the quality of urban life and poverty reduction.