A new research centre dedicated to the science of neighbourhood studies has been launched by SHLC’s partners in the Philippines.
The Centre for Neighbourhood Studies – CeNS – is an independent, non-government, non-profit organisation aimed at understanding, developing and promoting smarter and more sustainable neighbourhoods.
Inspired by our ‘mother’ Centre, the GCRF-funded ‘Centre Sustainable, Healthy and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods (SHLC)’, ‘CeNS’ focuses on enhancing research and development, capacity building, and professional services to support the sustainable transformation of Filipino neighbourhoods.
Mark Gamboa, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of CeNS, said:
“With the neighbourhoods as our key focus, CeNS began with the aim of bridging the gap between communities and higher levels of government. Our approach is based on the synergistic relationships we have developed with our SHLC partners, academia, the national government, the local government units, and most importantly, the neighbourhoods and the families who live there. We look forward to collaborating with our communities and strengthening their capacity to ensure their neighbourhoods are resilient and sustainable pockets of development in the Philippines.”
CeNS launched on 21 February during the SHLC International Partners Meeting in the Philippines, and held its first Strategic Planning Workshop at the beginning of March where community members were invited to contribute to crafting the guiding principles that will serve as the core of the organisation. By bringing their focus down to the neighbourhood, the members vision supports: “Inclusive, resilient, and sustainable neighbourhoods of healthy and learning people who have equitable access to quality basic services, adequate economic opportunities, appropriate infrastructure, and who nurture a balanced ecology, a sense of community, and partnerships for development.”
The Centre is now looking forward to an international conference slated for November of this year and developing ‘Kapitbahayan Partnerships’ to help create stronger linkages between ‘barangays’ – the most basic government unit in the country – and the neighbourhoods within them. The team at CeNS are also working hard on creating a ‘collabAYANIHAN Observatory’, which is a crowd-sourced repository of visual, audio, and spatial data of neighbourhoods, as well as supporting an ‘Immersive Pocket Planning’ project that will help support neighbourhoods to craft local urban plans via virtual reality-enabled development planning.
Professor Ya Ping Wang, Director of SHLC, said:
“I am really excited to see the launch of ‘CeNS’. It is a testament to our approach at SHLC which, I hope, will see a longer-term impact of focusing on neighbourhoods to achieve sustainable cities in the Philippines. On a recent research visit to the Philippines, we saw with our own eyes the importance of local governance in the ‘barangays’, so I am particularly pleased to see that CeNS will focus on indigenous knowledge of neighbourhoods and the communities and families that live there. I wish the team at CeNS the best of luck and look forward to collaborating!”
Hi. I’d like to contribute to this movement. Liveable neighborhoods is the topic of my PhD dissertation, and it espouses a contextual approach to livability .
Hello Nicola
Great news to hear you are interested in the new Centre for Neighbourhood Studies. If you are interested in collaborating with the Centre, please contact Assitant Professor Mark Anthony M. Gamboa https://pages.upd.edu.ph/enplex/about.
Best wishes
SHLC