Abstract :
During the last half of 1999, the author acted as team leader on an Asian Development Bank-sponsored project to write the national urban policy of the Philippines for the period 1999–2004. Formally speaking, the object of this exercise was to update the Philippine National Urban Development and Housing Framework, as mandated by national legislation. Informally, the new policy was an attempt to develop innovative approaches to overcoming the urban poverty that is endemic to the Philippines. The lack of financial resources within the urban sector formed a major constraint on the kinds of policies that were possible. As a result, the policy included a number of relatively radical measures to deal with the direction of the nationʹs urban development within the spheres of urban growth and metropolitanization, land, urban environmental, infrastructure, housing and urban governance, but were designed to involve minimum levels of public expenditure. Yet writing innovative policy in a very traditional environment is not easy. The paper discusses the political setting within which the policy was formulated, the political opposition that developed and the extensive public participation exercise that was designed to insure ‘ownership’ of the policy by the Philippine people. Once policy is written, it is of no value to anyone unless it is implemented. The paper concludes with an examination of the prospects for policy implementation within the Philippine context.
