From Urban Fringe to Urban Spine: The Case of Metro Manila's EDSA

Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue or EDSA is Metro Manila's predominant urban artifact. What was supposed to be a peripheral circumferential road bypassing downtown Manila has become an armature for urban sprawl and the subsequent hollowing-out of the urban core. This is a study of urban morphology on the scale of the Metropolis, looking at how various factors have produced the unintended consequences of creating edge cities that are more vibrant than what was once the Pearl of the Orient - Manila. Rather than cling to the City Beautiful, which has become the well-spring of the radial-circumferential plan that produced EDSA- this dissertation asks how the Metropolitan form could be evolved toward a multi-modal, local and pedestrian future.