Dr. H.C. Kristin Feireiss of Aedes,

Ambassador Volker Schlegel, President of the Asia Pacific Forum,

Mr. Franz Xaver Augustin,

Ms. Ulla Giesler of Aedes,

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

            It is truly an honor and a pleasure to join you at this Smart Cities reception, which is being tendered in connection with the Asia Pacific Weeks 2013.

            I want to add my voice in thanking the Aedes Architecture Forum and the Asia Pacific Forum for organizing this reception.

            I am glad that Aedes has chosen to focus on the cities of Southeast Asia and that you have invited so many of our architects and urban planners – not only the established ones but also the younger ones – and posed the thought-provoking question of what effect architecture and urban intervention can have on city residences.

            To add to what I have already said at the opening, allow me to enlist the services of the great Filipino Jesuit Historian, Horacio De La Costa, in his essay “The Freedom of the City”, in which he wrote about Manila and about the bonds between the people and their city, and their meaning.

            He wrote, and I quote:

            “Men generally have found great advantages in being part of a city; many of the good things they enjoy they owe to their city; and hence their city is something worthy of their loyalty and love. And so we see that before there was love of one’s fatherland, or patriotism, there was love of one’s city, or citizenship; the first was, historically, merely the extension of the second. Indeed, the ancient Greeks identified what we would now call their nation, or the state, with the city. They found it difficult to conceive of a nation or state larger than a city. The thinking behind this was that what binds the people of a state together is mutual respect, esteem and affection…”

            Fr. De La Costa draws on historical data to argue that Manila is a city with a great past. Then he brings his discussion full circle to contemporary times, and concludes with the penetrating insight as follows:

            “If we are at some time to make a beginning of solving our national problem of poverty, where can we best make that beginning if not here. For if the nation’s wealth, industry, and business enterprise are concentrated here, precisely because of that, it is also here that the best managerial and entrepreneurial talent is gathered together.

            “The leadership is here for any kind of planned and organized attack on the problems that depress more than half of the population of Manila below the level of life consistent with human dignity. If any kind of expertise is needed in any of the sciences of social reform and reconstruction, there, almost within a stone’s throw of each other, are the universities, the communities of scholars, the institutions of higher learning and research. And if what is required is willing hands and hearts to carry out concerted efforts at community development or urban resettlement, there are the student bodies of these same institutions, the campuses from which increasing numbers of generous young men and women can volunteer their summer vacation and even their weekend holidays, towards one form or another of social action.”

            In his own way, back in 1972, 41 years ahead of his time, Fr. Dela Costa was already thinking about how to make Manila a smart city – smart in caring for its great heritage, smart in harnessing intellectual and cultural resources for the solution of problems, smart in accelerating the growth of business and industry, and smart in distributing equitably the every increment in economic progress.

            Our young architects and urban planners in Southeast Asia will literally change our urban landscape – and the way we feel about our cities – in coming years.

            I am truly pleased that here in Berlin you have created a forum for these architects and urban planners to come together and address these questions. I am happy that you have conducted workshops in Manila, Jakarta, and Phnom Penh precisely to urge us to think of these questions and our own potential to seek solutions. I am glad that we are asking not only how to make cities smarter, more sustainable, and more efficient – but also how more livable they can be.

            I am a man wearing several hats – and as of now, I am wearing the hat of the chair of the Philippine Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council. In this capacity, I deal with the tough questions brought about by economic development and urban growth.

            As the Philippine economy goes from strength to strength, with a robust outlook of 6.6% growth, and with two investment grade ratings within this first quarter of 2013 – so would we need to deal with the challenges to Metro Manila as it strives to fulfill its potential as a 21st century city and to serve as the gateway for increasing foreign and domestic investments in Philippine modernization and development.

            Much has been written about how Metro Manila has become a hotbed for outsourcing and how our young and robust English-speaking population is attracting a surge in outsourcing investments. This investment and industry surge has contributed greatly to changes in the urban landscape, reviving decaying commercial districts, and attracting educated youth from the provinces.

            But the challenges of urbanization, while different in quality, remain similar to what I encountered when I first became mayor of Makati City thirty years ago.The questions that confronted us then were almost exactly the same questions now being addressed by the thoughtful program of the smart city talks/symposium organized by the Aedes:

•    First, how do we create an inclusive and coherent society and care for the needs of our urban residents?

•    Second, how do we house this growing urban population and transport people from their houses to their places of work?

•    And third, how do we better plan and govern this changing complex urban landscape?

            At the center of all urban planning is our people.

            For instance, the robust business process outsourcing industry means that many of our young people now have to work at night and until the wee hours of the morning as they serve customers of a different time zone. How do we keep them safe? How will they travel from their homes to their work places when they work the graveyard shift and need to commute across different cities in Metro Manila? The solutions to these questions challenge us to think beyond city boundaries and in terms of integrated planning for transport and housing for a growing young urban populace.

            Housing, especially affordable social housing, is an issue close to my heart. In the Philippines, as an impact of urbanization, we need to fill up a backlog of 3.6 million housing units in just a few years. We are searching for smart solutions and partners – and I note with great interest that the smart city talks/symposium will tackle smart technologies/materials and smart housing developments.

            A great source of demand for social housing is our Filipino migrant workers. They are also one of the key drivers of our economy and our bullish growth – through their families’ domestic consumption. Our millions-strong overseas Filipino workers remit billions of dollars annually to their families in the Philippines. Many of them send their children to schools in the capital and invest in real properties in Metro Manila – in affordable condominiums, for instance. This demand is changing the face of the cities of Metro Manila, for better or for worse.

            Indeed, the character of our economic development impacts on our urban landscape. President Benigno S. Aquino III made a social contract with our people when he assumed office in 2010: that his government will strive for rapid and inclusive growth.

            In the span of a few years, we have reaped gains from his reform efforts towards good governance. However, we need to work harder on reflecting the aspiration for inclusive growth in the way our cities in Metro Manila are growing: that they can be smart, green, mobile, and ultimately livable for ordinary people. And there is still so much for us to do to wrestle down the challenge of mass poverty and lift up the lives of millions of our poor in our megacity.

            Aedes and the Asia Pacific Forum have done a wonderful thing in getting us all together here, and the beauty of it all is that this is just the beginning.

            Maraming salamat po.

            Danke schoen!

            Mabuhay tayong lahat!