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Tourism has become important for (mega)cities in Southeast Asia. Metropolitan Manila competes in the tourism market, but its tourism is scholarly unexplored so far. This Ph.D. thesis takes the approach, that urban tourism is a system comprising interacting stakeholders at the supply and consumer side, and visitor attractions. This dissertation analyses and characterizes Metropolitan Manila`s tourism system referring to its stakeholders, visitor attractions and services. Metropolitan Manila is able to tap the domestic and international tourism market with various attraction resources. But Metropolitan Manila`s supply-side stakeholder field appears highly diverse. The relations among these stakeholders can be characterized through discontinuous links, unequal participation, and non power-sharing. This adverse status is aggravated through the absence of tourism policy, obsolete tourism planning approaches and the dominance of top-down deciding political elites. Consequently, a consensual, goal-oriented acting is inhibited. Instead stakeholders act mutually exclusive or compete with each other. Tourism is predominately seen as a valuable economic tool. As a result, other important dimensions of tourism like socio-cultural, experiential, and infrastructural aspects are negated to a great extent. The current visitor is a short staying stop-over traveller who recognizes the capital`s built heritage as unique. Visitor activities and spatial flow are mainly confined on the heritage of the city centre. But the visitor`s impression of the capital is negative and dissatisfaction with public sector services occurs. Valuable visitor attractions are difficult to access and the tourism infrastructure is perceived as weakly developed. This emphasizes that the tourism officials are not able to create a fully convincing tourism product and they neglect other metropolitan-wide tourism potentials. Recommended future measures should improve the cooperation of supply-side stakeholders and tourism planning embracing the whole metropolis. Moreover, measures must improve tourism infrastructure, public sector services, marketing, and destination image of the capital in order to enhance its competitiveness.

SummaryLongitudinal data collected over a 2-year period (1982–84) on 152 first and second parity mothers who were delivered in a charity maternity hospital in Manila, Philippines, indicate the reasons for never brest-feeding and for early termination of brest-feeding. Socio-Cultural factors and beliefs are more important than physiological problems in minating breast-feeding.Proper bottle-feeding is too costly for most low-income families. Bottle-fed babies have a higher incidence of diarrhoea. Mothers who change from breast- to bottle-feeding in the first 6 months are 1·7 times as likely to become pregnant in the first year post-partum as mothers Who brest-feed for 7 or more months.

The aim of this study was to measure the exhaustion, cynicism and professional efficacy that would determine an individual's level of burnout. A convenient sample of employees (N=747) was obtained from different call centers in Metro Manila. The results indicated a high level of exhaustion for the age group of 18-29 years old and for the female respondents. More than half of the respondents were high in cynicism and those who reported a low professional efficacy were mostly females. Age showed a significant relationship with exhaustion and cynicism while tenure at present job showed a significant relationship with professional efficacy. Results implied that working in a call center may lead to employee burnout especially for females and those who are new in their job.

Dengue is the most important mosquito-borne disease in the Philippines, especially in Metropolitan Manila where communities are socially and economically diverse, and city governments struggle to provide basic services such as continuously available, piped water supply to residents. We examined responses to introducing water container management to control dengue vectors in two diverse communities in Masagana City: Village A (gated community) and Village B (informal settlers community). The roll out of the intervention was carried out by the study team, dengue control personnel and local health workers (BHWs). A behavioural change framework was used to describe the community responses to the introduction of a new vector control intervention - household water container management. Although, the desired outcome was not achieved during the study's timeline, observation on processes of behaviour change underscored the importance of understanding the social nature of the urban communities, often overlooked structures when dengue control program and researchers introduce new dengue control interventions.

In a densely populated and hazard-prone megalopolis like Metro Manila, the ability to execute a rapid evacuation protocol is crucial in saving lives and minimizing the damage during disastrous events. However, there is no centralized database on the location of evacuation centers (ECs) in Metro Manila and the available lists are not up-to-date. This study geotagged the current list of ECs in Metro Manila obtained from different government agencies to evaluate the spatial distribution using Geographical Information System (GIS). This is important since the immediate evacuation of residents depends on the proximity and safe location of the ECs. A total of 870 ECs were geo-tagged and validated using the street view of Google Earth TM . EC-to-population ratios were calculated for each of the 16 cities and one municipality of Metro Manila. Values range from ~3,000 to 81,000 persons per EC. Distance analysis using Thiessen Polygon shows that the ECs are not evenly distributed with proximity areas ranging from 0.0009 to 9.5 km 2 . Out of the total number of mapped ECs, 392 (45%) are situated in flood-prone areas while 108 (12%) are within the 1-km buffer hazard zone of an active faultline. Re-evaluation of the locations and the number of ECs per city or municipality is highly recommended to facilitate prompt evacuation when disasters strike.

In a densely populated and hazard-prone megalopolis like Metro Manila, the ability to execute a rapid evacuation protocol is crucial in saving lives and minimizing the damage during disastrous events. However, there is no centralized database on the location of evacuation centers (ECs) in Metro Manila and the available lists are not up-to-date. This study geotagged the current list of ECs in Metro Manila obtained from different government agencies to evaluate the spatial distribution using Geographical Information System (GIS). This is important since the immediate evacuation of residents depends on the proximity and safe location of the ECs. A total of 870 ECs were geo-tagged and validated using the street view of Google EarthTM. EC-to-population ratios were calculated for each of the 16 cities and one municipality of Metro Manila. Values range from ~3,000 to 81,000 persons per EC. Distance analysis using Thiessen Polygon shows that the ECs are not evenly distributed with proximity areas ranging from 0.0009 to 9.5 km2. Out of the total number of mapped ECs, 392 (45%) are situated in flood-prone areas while 108 (12%) are within the 1-km buffer hazard zone of an active faultline. Re-evaluation of the locations and the number of ECs per city or municipality is highly recommended to facilitate prompt evacuation when disasters strike.

This descriptive single-case study is a glimpse of barangay governance performance vis-à-vis the recurrent governance challenges confronting a local community mired in chronic poverty, in Manila, Philippines. The case of Barangay 872 shows an incongruous claim of 'good' governance performance juxtaposed alongside the constituents 'limited access to services, resources, and opportunities. With the implementation of the Barangay Governance Performance Management System (BGPMS) and the Enhanced Barangay Governance Performance Management System (E-BGPMS) as a management approach, the narratives and self-conducted performance assessments of the Barangay Council from the Year 2013-2017, extract a 'paradox' of governance performance. Over time, the apparent 'strength' of the Barangay Council in the governance and administrative performance sector co-exists with a stagnant economic development and lags behind the relatively slight improvements in the social services and environmental management sectors. In this light, this paper poses the question: "What accounts for the Council's inconsistent governance performance?" Employing Blumer's symbolic interactionism as a theoretical lens, in the eyes of the Council, the 'paradox' emanates from the prevalence of the 'weak-performing' sectors over the 'strong-performing' sectors, which they attribute to three persistent factors: 1]. the barangay's limited economic resources and stagnant agriculture; 2]. implementation of poverty targeting policy as a 'structural strain'; and 3]. limited institutional support from the local government units.