WTA Labs: Center for Urban Research invites proposals for original research studies and projects in its inaugural thematic agenda on: people + environment, cities + ruralities, and urban solutions + innovations. WTA Labs shall support research initiatives with a maximum seed-fund grant of Php 25,000.00 for each project, expected to be conducted and completed within 2026.

WTA Labs is interested in the studies at the intersections of people, settlements and environment, particularly in the Filipino context. Research projects must be able to add to the discourse of urban and community studies, exploring long standing questions and problems present in the target place of study. The research process must also take emphasis in revealing local narratives and perspectives, collaborating and co-creating research with people in the communities.

Thematic Agenda

The 2026 program intends to have the following thematic agenda:

People + Place

People + Place explores the current realities, problems, and aspirations of people, in relation to their natural, built, and social environments. These topics may look into how people move in their everyday spaces and how the design, accessibility, and quality of these spaces affect their well-being, opportunities, and interactions. We recognize that environments are not neutral—they shape experiences, influence outcomes, and can either empower or constrain communities.

Studies under this theme may examine everyday experiences, practices, and negotiations through which people shape—and are shaped by—their environments. This includes small-scale, informal, or temporary spaces, as well as the ways people adapt to, cope with, or challenge spatial constraints. Research may focus on a single community, site, or activity, and may be exploratory in nature.

Cities + Ruralities

Cities + Ruralities reflects on the sophistication of urban and rural systems, looking at how the differing landscapes of urbanity and rurality contrast and relate to each other. Studies may focus on either of them as well as relate them to each other. The topics may look at macro-level systems, infrastructure, informality, environment and climate and resilience, as well as questions of governance, mobility, livelihoods, and access to resources and services. These studies can deepen understanding of social inequalities and lived experiences across urban and rural contexts.

Studies may focus on urban or rural contexts independently, or explore the relationships between them, including flows of people, resources, labor, services, or risk. Research may be grounded in specific places while speaking to broader structural dynamics.

Urban Solutions + Innovations

Filipino cities and communities have recurring problems and aspirations, creativity, analysis and innovation could pave the way for improved lived experience in the city. There is strong emphasis in identifying a problem or a gap, particularly within urgent and contemporary issues in Filipino cities and communities such as access to services, climate and hazards and local social life, sensitive to the direct localized contexts. These projects must include conceptualizing innovative interventions that require diverse forms of knowledge and partnerships with communities.

This call is an opportunity to (re)explore cities, environments and communities, towards generating new empirical evidence to contribute to our collective understanding of our spaces and communities, while honoring the diverse perspectives present in these contexts.