Urban Wildlife as Consideration for Parks and City Planning: San Juan-Mandaluyong Study

In the presence of Metro Manila’s urban heat, the citizens echo, “We need more parks, not malls” on social media, slowly recognizing the importance of nature in mitigating the heat and improving public health.

Despite what it seems, Metro Manila still harbors a resilient layer of biodiversity, especially among its urban and migratory bird populations. However, their survival depends on the remaining natural spaces that the cities have.

On paper, it’s easy to just allot a space, plant some trees, and declare it a green space. But the combination of rapid urban sprawl, densification, and infrastructure developments, together with a severe lack of urban planning implementation, raises the question:

In the dire need for green spaces, how can we use urban wildlife as a guide to strategically place ecological interventions?

Case Study: San Juan-Mandaluyong Green Network

Introducing the San Juan-Mandaluyong green network, an ongoing research project by WTA Labs aiming to uncover the hidden ecological potential of our cities by mathematically identifying and connecting fragmented tree canopies to create functional wildlife corridors. This framework looks at the green areas of our city and asks how we can link them together so that urban wildlife (and by extension, the benefits of nature) can flow through the city?

The two cities serving as the study area presents extreme urban density and critical fragmentation of green cover, providing a representative high-friction environment to test the viability of establishing functional ecological linkages within a congested metropolitan matrix.

This model is built upon four fundamental ecological theories, translated for the realities of the urban environment:

A. The Structural Foundation: Defining the "Green Islands"

To figure out where nature can survive, we first have to understand how space works for wildlife.

1. Island Biogeography. Originally used to study actual islands in the ocean, this theory states that larger islands can support more life, while smaller islands are more fragile. In our framework, the "ocean" is the concrete matrix of Metro Manila, and the "islands" are our parks and tree patches. By determining the minimum viable size for a "green island", we can map out the essential stepping stones birds need to survive the concrete “sea”.

2. Patch-Corridor-Matrix Model. This theory breaks down the entire city into three simple categories:

• Patches: The habitats (parks, dense gardens).

• Corridors: The safe travel routes and stepping stones between them (tree-lined streets, habitat buffers).

• The Matrix: The dominant, often hostile background (buildings, highways, bare concrete).

Patch-corridor-matrix model of a city (in the style of Flappy Bird as the model organism). The organism is trying to go from Patch A to Patch B surrounded by matrices, with the safest route being the corridor.

Structural Connectivity

To analyze structural connectivity, Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) is a geospatial algorithm that scans a map of urban tree cover and mathematically categorizes every single patch of green based on its geometry and physical connections. Applying the logic of Island Biogeography, MSPA calculates the "edge effect" to identify sufficient, robust Core areas (the true, stable islands) while distinguishing them from highly vulnerable Islets (tiny, isolated green dots in the concrete sea). Simultaneously, it brings the Patch-Corridor-Matrix model to life by physically identifying Bridges, the structural corridors that successfully link two separate core habitats across the matrix. By stripping away the urban noise, MSPA reveals the pure structural skeleton of the city’s ecological network, showing us exactly which green spaces act as foundational anchors and which act as vital connecting threads. 

B. The Functional Movement: How Wildlife Navigates

Knowing where the trees are isn't enough; we have to understand how animals actually experience the city while moving through it.

3. Synanthropy and Synurbization. Synanthropy refers to the general phenomenon of species living in close proximity to humans to exploit the food and shelter we provide, whereas synurbization is the specific process of wild populations adapting to and thriving within the unique ecological conditions of urban environments. Essentially, if synanthropy is the broad arrangement where animals move into our orbit, synurbization involves the actual behavioral and physiological upgrades that transform a forest dweller into a resilient urbanite. 

We aren't designing for deep-forest eagles and large mammals; we are designing for commonly-seen urban birds, like the Yellow-vented Bulbul or the Eurasian Tree Sparrow (both of which are a synurbist and a synanthrope). These theories explain how certain species adapt to live alongside human activity. They can thrive on the "edges" of human spaces, it just requires smart integration of canopy cover and other microfeatures in our streets, in order for them to live a full life with less stress. However, because highly fragmented urban parks cannot provide year-round food and safe nesting sites on their own, these resilient birds are forced to constantly commute between isolated core habitats, making their survival dependent on how safely they can navigate the hostile concrete matrix. 

4. Least-Cost Path and Circuit Theory. When a bird decides to fly from San Juan to Mandaluyong, it doesn't fly in a perfect straight line. It takes the route that costs the least amount of biological energy and carries the lowest risk. Our framework calculates this "biological cost" based on three major urban barriers:

• Physical Gaps: Wide roads (like EDSA) are vast, hot, and dangerous to cross. This increases the hesitance to cross if there is no visible canopy on the other side.

• Vertical Exertion: Flying over a 10-story building requires a massive amount of caloric energy compared to flying over a 2-story house.

• Human Disturbance: Areas with extreme human density and noise cause stress.

Functional Connectivity

The foundations of circuit theory take this biological cost a step further by borrowing principles from electrical engineering, treating the entire urban landscape as a conductive grid where urban wildlife acts as an electrical current flowing through the city. While the Least-Cost Path identifies the single easiest route, circuit theory maps all possible pathways simultaneously. In this model, areas with high biological cost act as "resistors" that block or restrict flow, while shaded, canopy-rich streets act as conductive wires. This allows us to mathematically visualize the overall flow of movement across the city, pinpointing critical bottlenecks or "pinch points" where a single residential street might be the only viable green link preventing total ecological disconnection. 

To determine which of the mapped habitats and pathways are the most critical to protect or enhance, the framework relies on Conefor, an analytical tool grounded in Graph Theory. While MSPA identifies the physical skeleton of the city's green spaces and Circuit Theory maps the potential flow of wildlife through the matrix, Conefor evaluates the overall resilience of the entire system. It treats the urban landscape as a complex mathematical network of nodes (the core green patches) and edges (the corridors connecting them). By calculating habitat availability metrics such as the Probability of Connectivity, Conefor measures exactly how much the loss or addition of a single tree canopy patch would impact the overall connectivity of the city. This translates raw spatial data into actionable triage; it mathematically pinpoints which specific stepping stones act as the critical points of the ecological grid, directly providing the data needed for the strategic prioritization of limited urban space. 

City Green Network Analysis Research Framework by Samuel Evangelista, 2026. The three major methodologies allow for the objective identification of structural anchors, the mapping of functional movement, and the prioritization of critical patches within a single integrated system. The framework provides a replicable and scalable approach to urban planning that translates raw geospatial data into actionable ecological interventions.

Moving Forward

By combining these four theories, the San Juan-Mandaluyong framework is a replicable and scalable method that treats the existing street network as the city’s primary ecological circulatory system. It identifies specific corridors where specific greening interventions can yield the highest biological and social returns.

This data-driven approach provides a beneficial roadmap for Local Government Units (LGUs) to transition toward biodiversity-led planning. The creation of wildlife “stepping stones” that account for potential movement patterns can help inform planners where to implement interventions that support both urban biodiversity and citizen well-being. In turn, these strategies could strengthen LGU-led green city initiatives by creating more connected, resilient, and livable urban environments.

This is the core identity of the research. Cities can invest in specific paths such as streets that then would link isolated core areas in the city. This allows urban wildlife to navigate with lower metabolic stress while the local temperature simultaneously gets reduced – a critical win for public health in a warming climate.

This framework translates into community stewardship at the barangay level, managing vital microfeatures where local leaders can identify specific blocks for community-led interventions, such as vertical greenery or permeable roadside planting. Since these are the areas where residents and wildlife are most likely to interact, the Barangay becomes the frontline for synurban harmony, ensuring that new green corridors are protected and maintained by the people who breathe their air.

Ultimately, this framework proves that by weaving biodiversity into the streets we walk every day, we transform San Juan-Mandaluyong from a barrier and isolation of heat and asphalt into a functional, city-wide ecological system.