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Urban sprawl, public transport, and increasing CO2 emissions: the case of Metro Manila, Philippines

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Abstract

Current international discussions on the increasingly critical levels of carbon emissions from the transportation sector commonly attribute the causality chain to urban sprawl growth–private car use–carbon emission. An often assumed development context of this causality chain is that common of developed country urbanization. However, in the particular context of developing country urbanization, urban sprawl and associated workplace–home distanciation may lead to more intensive use by the urban workforce of public mass transportation system, instead of higher dependence on private vehicle travel. Thus, the source of the rise in carbon emission may actually be the public transportation system. Utilizing mixed methods, combining quantitative (origin–destination matrices) and qualitative data gathering and analysis, the authors present a case study in Metro Manila which has been experiencing sprawl and increasing costs and unaffordability of land and housing in the workforce’s vicinity of employment. This, in turn, causes greater distances of daily travel between home and workplace using public transportation system. When the latter is characterized by fuel-inefficient small vehicles with second-hand engines, higher carbon emission results. We argue that the convergence of multiple interacting factors such as urban sprawl, lack of affordability of housing near the centres of employment, high dependence of commuters on public transports, longer distance travel by commuters, and low fuel efficiency of the public utility vehicles primarily causes the increase in CO2 emission from the transport sector. Implications of this case to policy scoping of immediate and long-term state responses for carbon emission mitigation in transportation sector are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Urban sprawl is a type of urban development with three defining traits: (1) unlimited extension into undeveloped areas, (2) low density, and (3) leapfrog development (Burchell et al. 2005).

  2. Probability sampling was used for the government worker respondents due to their accessibility inside their office premises. On the other hand, only convenience sampling could be used for the respondents in private manufacturing and service sectors, whose employers disallowed survey interviews to be conducted inside private firms’ premises. The authors had to interview workers as they come out of the firms’ premises en masse during breaks and dismissal time.

  3. BP 220 is an act authorizing the Ministry of Human Settlements to establish and promulgate different levels of standards and technical requirements for economic and socialized housing projects in urban and rural areas from those provided under Presidential Decree (PD) 957, PD 1216, PD 1096, and PD 1185.

  4. Provide a measure of clustering and dispersion for a set of points in relation to a specific reference (Lee and Wong 2000).

  5. Include provinces adjacent to Metro Manila.

  6. Majority, if not all, of these vehicles are privately owned mostly by individuals, whose main source of income is operating public utility vehicles such as jeepneys, busses, and motorcycle-drawn cabs for daily sustenance of their families.

  7. This characteristic has been verified by personal observations and various interviews with jeepney operators and drivers by the researchers.

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Acknowledgments

Part of this research work was made possible through the support of the Canadian Government, Southeast Asia Urban Environment Applications Project (SEA-UEMA), CIDA-AIT Partnership (2003–2008).

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  1. Urban Environmental Management, School of Environment Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology, Klong Luang, Pathumthani, Thailand, 12120

    Rebeca Fontanilla Andong & Edsel Sajor

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  1. Rebeca Fontanilla Andong
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Correspondence to Rebeca Fontanilla Andong.

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Andong, R.F., Sajor, E. Urban sprawl, public transport, and increasing CO2 emissions: the case of Metro Manila, Philippines. Environ Dev Sustain 19, 99–123 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-015-9729-8

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