Globally, cities are fast becoming the locus of initiatives for building urban resilience and local sustainability. However, imperatives for integration in disaster risk management amid boundary-transcending disasters in urban agglomerations and metropolitan regions, spur new contentions with regards to what constitutes as a responsive construction of the geographic scale and functional scope of the local, particularly in decentralized regimes. This paper assesses the relevance of the Philippines’ current framing of the local jurisdictions, as well as prevailing metropolitan governance arrangements and reform agenda, whether these are responsive to managing disaster variability and their required scales for integrated interventions. Specifically examining the case of urban flooding and management in the country’s major metropolitan regions Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Metro Davao – the study identifies the pitfalls of current frameworks of metropolitan disaster governance across the three conurbations, using the lens of scalar politics. It takes off from the different flood risk analyses and integrated flood management master plans proposed for these metropolises, which illustrate the growing salience of the metropolitan region as a crucial scale for positioning urban governance capacity. The paper argues that the Philippines’ construction of local political boundaries does not respond to the needed integration and scale for urban disaster management in metropolitan regions, which remain hijacked in the contestations for political control between and among central and local structures of power. The country’s decentralization system embeds metropolitan governance within the regional administrative governance coordinated by the central government. This creates an ironic capitulation of integrated urban disaster management mandates to central agencies; however, absent political authority, central government-led metropolitan institutions are constrained by prevailing socio-spatial fragmentation. Integrated flood management reforms therefore rely on ad hoc inter-local collaborations that are vulnerable to impasse in inter-jurisdictional negotiations. The study suggests that the Philippines is in a critical juncture to seriously consider reconfiguring its intergovernmental/decentralization system, and adopt a more appropriate scale reference towards institutionalizing political mandates for metropolitan structures. It concludes that responsive reframing of local and metropolitan regulatory authorities, in accordance with required scales and functional scopes of integrated disaster interventions, is a key reform agenda for governments to consider, if they are to seriously promote local capacity for urban resilience and sustainability.

中文翻译：

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菲律宾城市灾害管理中的标量政治：为地方复原力和可持续性重塑大都市治理

在全球范围内，城市正迅速成为建设城市复原力和当地可持续性的举措所在地。然而，在城市群和大都市区跨界灾害中整合灾害风险管理的必要性，引发了新的争论，即什么构成了地方地理规模和功能范围的响应性建设，特别是在分散的制度中。本文评估了菲律宾当前的地方管辖范围框架以及现行的大都市治理安排和改革议程的相关性，这些安排是否对管理灾害可变性及其所需的综合干预规模做出了反应。具体研究了该国主要大都市区马尼拉大都会、宿雾大都会和达沃大都会的城市洪水和管理案例——该研究利用标量政治的视角确定了三个大都市当前大都市灾害治理框架的缺陷。它从为这些大都市提出的不同洪水风险分析和综合洪水管理总体规划中分离出来，这说明大都市区作为定位城市治理能力的关键尺度日益突出。该论文认为，菲律宾对地方政治边界的构建没有响应大都市区城市灾害管理所需的整合和规模，在中央和地方权力结构之间的政治控制争夺中，它们仍然被劫持。该国的分权体制将大都市治理嵌入中央政府协调的区域行政治理中。这具有讽刺意味的是，将城市灾害综合管理任务交给中央机构；然而，由于缺乏政治权威，中央政府领导的大都市机构受到普遍存在的社会空间碎片化的制约。因此，综合洪水管理改革依赖于特别的地方间合作，而这些合作很容易在跨辖区谈判中陷入僵局。该研究表明，菲律宾正处于认真考虑重新配置其政府间/权力下放系统的关键时刻，并采用更合适的尺度参考，以将大都市结构的政治任务制度化。它的结论是，如果政府要认真促进地方城市复原力和可持续性能力，根据综合灾害干预所需的规模和职能范围，对地方和大都市监管机构进行响应性重构，是政府需要考虑的关键改革议程。