Abstract

With over 12 million residents, Metro MaNULLa comprises 14 percent of the Philippines’ population. The urbanisation experience has put considerable strain on the megacity’s infrastructure causing ecological problems which have contributed to an increasing propensity to hazardous flooding. This seminar will highlight how decades of inappropriate planning and poor management of infrastructure development programs contributed to the scale of the September 2009 flood disaster, created by Typhoon Ondoy (also known as Tropical Storm Ketsana). It will also outline how uneven regional development and the formation of ethnic enclaves with different economic opportunities and political capacity contribute to the variety of experiences within Metro MaNULLa’s changing environmental landscapes. A glimpse into the future for the metropolis will be presented, that takes into account the spatial markings of rapid large-scale urbanisation and the differential concentration of resources that has caused marginalisation of political and cultural groups, with the resultant increased risk to natural hazards.



Bio

Doracie has a background in Human Ecology and Geography and research related to the management of natural environments under high level development pressures and the impact of such on societies in the Philippines and Vietnam. She currently teaches into a master’s course on natural hazards in the Research School of Earth Sciences, ANU.