Write up about the Conference
Island Cities and Urban Archipelagosis an international, interdisciplinary island studies conference exploring how island status influences urban development. common attributes of island cities worldwide, and the opportunities that islandsness presents for developing urban culture and economies. It will also consider how and why different island cities have developed in different ways.
The conference will feature presentations on a variety of subjects relating to urban island culture, government, and economy. A variety of fields and disciplines will be covered, including anthropology, archaeology, architecture, arts and design, business, film, folklore, history, literature, planning, political science, public administration, sociology, and tourism. Presentations may concern cases from individual cites or take a comparative approach to understanding what it means to be an urban island.
Feedback on paper presented
The paper presented entitled “Implications of Climate Change: Perspective from Manilenos” was well received by the conference participants who attended the organized session: Manila: A Global City and the Center for Urban Development in the Philippines. The audience gave their comments/insights as well as raised relevant questions which included the following:
- The multidisciplinary lens used by the researcher/presented gave a concise and complete picture of how climate change affects Manila and it’s inhabitants.
- The researcher should explore the possibility of undertaking a study of Manila and another urban city in the region to be able to evaluate the overall performance of the city in terms of mitigation efforts, resilience and sustainability of programs.
- What percentage of the climate change projects succeeded? Failed?
- What is the nature of public-private-NGO collaboration to address the effect of climate change in Manila?
Future directions of research presented
The paper presented is just the initial step towards looking at, understanding and analyzing the effects of climate change in Manila. This research is also included in the list researches submitted by the College of Arts and Sciences to the Commission on Higher Education for funding. Since climate change is one of the priority areas identified by the government, the presenter will further improve on and refine the paper by incorporating the remarks/insights/suggestions given by the conference attendees. Once this has been done already, the paper will be submitted to various academic journals (local and international) for possible publication.
Potential foreign collaborators
I was able to establish contacts with other conference participants for possible collaborative work in the future in the areas of teaching, extension and research. To date, I am in contact with Adam Grydehoj, the chair of Island Dynamics and Ilan Kelman of the University College of London and we are discussing various ways and means to collaborate.
Other important contacts and insights
I was requested by the conference organizer to chair another panel entitled “Designing for the Future”. As an offshoot of this, I was able build rapport and maintain communication with the panel members namely: Jordan Howell of Rowan University, Keith Krumweide of New Jersey Institute of Technology, Carola Betzold of the University of Gothenburg and Nenad Starc of the Institute of economic, Zagreb, Croatia. We have exchanged and still are exchanging insights on various academic and non academic topics. I wish to continue engaging them and explore the possibility of collaborating with them in the future.
Short write-up of one’s participation (to be used to feature/publicize the grantee’s participation in the conference)
Assistant Professor Caringal chaired two sessions and presented a paper entitled ‘Implications of Climate Change: Perspectives from Manilenos during the recently concluded Island Cities and Urban Archipelagos international conference in Copenhagen, Denmark on October 20-25, 2014. The Conference which was attended in by policy makers, specialist, academics, researchers and practitioners investigated the intersection of island studies and urban studies concerning the politics, culture, economy, planning, environment and design of urban areas based on islands worldwide.
