ABSTRACT
The year 1990 was a milestone for the School of Urban and Regional Planning, one of the academic units in the Graduate School of the University of the Philippines, the country’s premier University. In the case of the Philippines, the problems had arisen within the backdrop of a volatile socio-political economic scenario. A report prepared by the United Nations Development Fund experts, who were invited by the Philippine government in 1958 to conduct a survey regarding the housing and planning situation in the country, carried a strong endorsement for capability building among the country’s professionals. The report revealed a dismal environmental picture of communities characterised by mushrooming of squatters. At the level of the Philippine bureaucracy, however, the overlapping concerns of economic and physical planning remained a continuing issue in the seventies, downplayed by the concerned decision makers with varying levels of success.
