Urban Partnerships Program Philippines (UPP Philippines) has three major emphases, working at different scales:

• City level — sustaining and deepening good urban governance with CUI’s long-term partners in the greater Iloilo-Guimaras city region. Metro Iloilo and Province of Guimaras are now organized as the Metro Iloilo Guimaras Economic Development Council (MIGEDC) under Executive Order No. 559 signed by the President of the Philippines on August 28, 2006. With MIGEDC supplanting the former Metropolitan Iloilo Development Council (MIDC) as the new and expanded metropolitan arrangement, CUI will support the newly constituted Council to become operational and effective, and by developing collaborative initiatives using a partnership approach to enhancing the civic public realm and urban sustainability. This will serve to sustain and deepen the gains made in good urban governance over the past decade with CUI support. This component will aim to make MIGEDC a “beacon for change” for the Western Visayas and for the country as a whole, in the light of the Philippines’ new Mega Region Economic Development Strategy.
• Regional level — catalyzing change in key cities across the Western Visayas region . CUI will work to intensify and expand the reach of the program to several other urbanizing centres across the Western Visayas. This will be done by helping MIGEDC to become a core knowledge centre with the support primarily of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Region VI, networked with 18 other cities/capital towns, across the region (including CUI’s long-term partner, the Municipality of Malay in Aklan Province) and sharing their expertise, know-how and approaches.
• National level — generating new ideas for sustainable urban development across the Philippines to scale up the model experiences and new knowledge from urban centres within Region VI to national-level enabling frameworks and in turn to share knowledge with other cities across the country.