The Zuellig School of Development Management and the School of Executive Education will be running short courses in disaster risk management and urban housing and settlement for local government executives and employees of the City of Makati.
Makati is touted as the country's financial capital. It boasts of having the highest per capita income in the country given the city’s annual income vis-a-vis its population. It probably also has the most number of people coming in daily for work, school, leisure, fun, shopping, and other activities.
But right alongside the cosmopolitan enclaves are the crowded shanties and informal settlers’ dwellings. For every well-kept park or urban green space there exist congested alleyways and polluted creeks, rotting garbage strewn amidst housing projects gone to seed.
The Makati City government acknowledges that like many urban areas all over the world, it needs to effectively address the issues of congestion, peace and order, development, waste management, housing for informal settlers and the working population, as well as disaster preparedness and disaster risk reduction and crisis management.
To this end, AIM has designed courses specifically tailored to help the Makati City government address these issues by providing a framework and approach that is not only efficient but sustainable as well as ethical. These programs will blend class sessions and exposure visits to relevant agencies local and overseas for benchmarking, sharing of best practices, and firsthand experience of the practical applications of the different concepts learned in class.
By offering the Strategic Disaster Risk Management and Leadership (SDRML) program, ZSDM School Head Dr. Kenneth Hartigan-Go expects that the Makati local government participants will recognize that, “Resilience-building should not only be seen in terms of technical capacities but also in enhancing managerial and leadership capabilities. The City Government needs to align strategies, structures, and policies to provide for efficient development interventions and reduce the unforeseen negative impact of disaster risks.”
Similarly, Prof. Richard Cruz, Head of the School of Education believes that those who attend the Executive Education training program for the redesign and redevelopment of Makati will realize that the issue of housing cannot be separated from the other problems that confront the city. “Housing needs to be viewed in the context of a highly urbanized city where land is a very expensive commodity and limited to about 20 densely built square kilometers. Makati has long been viewed as the business and financial center of the country. How can they continue growing and competing, given the challenges that urbanization brings? We expect them to appreciate how strategic interventions can be designed and implemented to address the most urgent problems.”