Forecasting city futures at the first BluPrint Circle of 2018

Designers, established and emerging, gathered on 28 June 2018 for the first BluPrint Circle of the year at the GROHE Showroom at Wilcon IT Hub. In this edition, guest speaker Sylvester Wong, AECOM Asia Pacific vice president for Strategies and Development, discussed planning smart cities and the possibilities with the upcoming New Clark City.

One of the notable diagrams Wong presented was a comparison of the spans of Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong and Clark-Manila-Batangas. Both are about the same length, but, in terms of productivity, the first economic corridor is over three times more output than the second. Wong also pointed out that it took Hong Kong 40 years of consistently managing their carbon footprint through more sustainable cities and communities to reach where they are today. He sees the same possibility in the Philippines.

One of the major obstacles in our cities today is congestion. A young and robust workforce is exploring new creative and collaborative industries. However, whatever GDP increase they are able to produce is outweighed by the productivity loss through traffic. New Clark City, with its mixed-use zones connected via in-city and cross-region public transit, is seen as a solution and hopefully a model other cities around the Philippines can adopt.

In BluPrint Circle fashion, the presentation was followed by questions from the audience members. And conversations continued through the evening over dinner. Check out the photos below to see more of what happened that night at Wilcon IT Hub.

Photographed by Ed Simon