{"id":10663,"date":"2026-06-01T18:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T10:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/?p=10663"},"modified":"2026-06-01T18:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T10:26:15","slug":"pasig-city-wins-1m-grant-for-participatory-floating-parks-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/2026\/06\/01\/pasig-city-wins-1m-grant-for-participatory-floating-parks-project\/","title":{"rendered":"Pasig City wins $1M grant for participatory floating parks project"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6 style=\"text-align: center;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Photos of the Pasig City\u2019s floating parks project prototype (top left) and conceptual renderings from design studios ALAO and PGAA. (Photo from the <a href=\"https:\/\/pasigcity.gov.ph\/news-and-releases\/floating-parks-concept-ng-lungsod-ng-pasig-wagi-sa-bloomberg-philanthropies-2025-2026-mayors-challenge-621\"><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong>Pasig City website<\/strong><\/span><\/a>)<br \/>\n<\/span><\/i><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The City Government of Pasig, Philippines won the 2025-2026 Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge for its proposal to co-design with residents floating parks in flood-prone waterways to reduce overflow, add green spaces, and strengthen community ties.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The<\/span><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #00ccff;\" href=\"https:\/\/bloombergcities.jhu.edu\/program\/mayors-challenge\"> Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge<\/a><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a global competition to encourage local government innovation that improves lives in cities and supports them through funding and technical assistance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For its sixth round in 2025-2026, the Challenge awarded <\/span><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #00ccff;\" href=\"https:\/\/bloombergcities.jhu.edu\/program\/mayors-challenge\/2025-winning-cities\">24 winners<\/a><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> out of 630 applications from cities and towns that have proposed and tested project ideas to improve essential services at scale, such as cooling homes, reducing waste, lowering utility costs, expanding transit, increasing jobs, and more. The winning ideas were chosen for their novelty, potential impact, and strength of implementation plans. The Challenge officially announced the winners in February 2026.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pasigcity.gov.ph\/news-and-releases\/in-photos-prototype-saturday-for-our-floating-parks-concept-466\"><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong>In September 2025, Pasig City held a prototyping or demonstration day<\/strong><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for its floating parks concept as one of the competition\u2019s finalists. Using a barge on the Pasig River, the local government set up its project design, in which the floating public space can house a playground, pocket park, garden, and multipurpose community areas, among others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Pasig City local government unit (LGU) attributed the success of the project\u2019s prototype to the series of community consultations they held with barangay (village) officials and residents to co-design the project, and the city\u2019s partners from national government offices, civil society organizations, and the private sector.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pasigcity.gov.ph\/news-and-releases\/floating-parks-concept-ng-lungsod-ng-pasig-wagi-sa-bloomberg-philanthropies-2025-2026-mayors-challenge-621\"><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong>Through the floating parks<\/strong><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Pasig City aims to have more green, open spaces that can cater to different sectors in the community, especially the youth and elderly. With the project\u2019s place-making and participatory approach, it also aims to revitalize the residents\u2019 connection to the Pasig River, which holds historical and cultural significance to the city.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Aside from the US$1 million grant, Pasig City will also receive technical and operational support from experts and additional financial support to further conduct community co-designing of its project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the project design, Pasig City also worked with design studios <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.alao.design\/advocacy-research\/pasig-river-parks\"><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong>ALAO<\/strong><\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and PGAA Creative Design.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #00ccff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share\/p\/1arLs8chEX\/\">In ALAO\u2019s Facebook post<\/a><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong>,<\/strong><\/span> Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto expressed that the city plans to have residents actively participate in designing, building, and managing or operating the parks, and not just be mere visitors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The City Government of Pasig is a member of ICLEI and has been involved in several ICLEI Southeast Asia projects, including the <\/span><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #00ccff;\" href=\"https:\/\/acp.iclei.org\/city\/pasig-city\/\">Ambitious City Promises project<\/a><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and most recently the <\/span><span style=\"color: #00ccff;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #00ccff;\" href=\"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/2025\/11\/27\/active-mobility-champions-celebrate-wins-lessons-in-spark-project-culminating-event\/\">Sparking Active Mobility Actions for Climate-friendly Cities (SPARK) Project<\/a><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which concluded in 2025.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photos of the Pasig City\u2019s floating parks project prototype (top left) and conceptual renderings from design studios ALAO and PGAA. (Photo from the Pasig City website) The City Government of Pasig, Philippines won the 2025-2026 Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge for its proposal to co-design with residents floating parks in flood-prone waterways to reduce overflow, add [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":10665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,51],"tags":[3283,2356,2669,2270,3284,2181,271,2642,2791,3285,3286],"class_list":["post-10663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-news","category-news","tag-bloomberg-mayors-challenge","tag-city-innovation","tag-community-engagement","tag-grant","tag-green-spaces","tag-participatory-planning","tag-pasig-city","tag-pasig-city-floating-parks","tag-public-participation","tag-public-spaces","tag-urban-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10666,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10663\/revisions\/10666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}