TITLE:
Management of the Urban Environment in Three Southeast Asian Coastal Metros: Bangkok, Manila and Jakarta
AUTHORS:
David J. Edelman
KEYWORDS:
Urban Environmental Management, Metro, Southeast Asia, Developing Coun-try, NGO
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.13 No.10,
October
31,
2023
ABSTRACT: Urban
Environmental Management (UEM) has been receiving increasing attention since
1970 in both developed countries, where it has emerged as a subject of academic
research and professional interest, and in developing countries, where it has
become increasingly an area of donor concern as well. As a field, it is more
like planning or engineering rather than geography, economics or sociology; and
it represents an integrated view of environmental problems at city, metro and
increasingly, regional level. Such problems are multi-sectoral (e.g., manufacturing,
services, household, etc.), multi-system (e.g., water supply, sanitation,
transport, etc.), multi-level (central, regional, metro, local and community)
and multi-actor (e.g., government, NGO, CBO and private). They require
solutions of enormous complexity. Three different research projects of graduate
students in urban planning at the University of Cincinnati led by the author
have studied the environmental problems of the three largest metros in
Southeast Asia: Jakarta, Bangkok and Manila, and suggested how they could be
ameliorated somewhat if not solved. This paper compares the three approaches of
the students to formulate a 5-year plan of solutions to the environmental
problems and issues they faced rather than to be told how to solve them. This expanded
their analytical skills and taught them how to utilize the limited knowledge
and resources available to come up with implementable solutions for the benefit
of the population of Bangkok, Jakarta or Metro Manila. They learned that such
skills are transferable to other projects, and they gained a greater
appreciation of the skill set that they are developing as planners. Bringing
the reality of development to the classroom and asking students to confront it
gives them an appreciation of professional practice that the study of theory
alone does not. Thus, this project has attempted not only to expand the
education of planning graduate students, but also to provide a meaningful
contribution to planning pedagogy.