THE MALL CULTURE is deeply ingrained in Filipinos, pandemic or not. With around 65.3% of the eligible population (about 71.6 million individuals) vaccinated against COVID-19, more people are seeking a sense of normalcy by going to malls to shop, dine, and socialize.

PLANNING a smart city is not simply an exercise in deploying the most wondrous new technology. If the Philippines’ planners have their way, future city architecture will serve as a tool for making prosperity more broad-based, and attractiveness to investors more sustained. In other words, the building works may be critically important on the surface, but the social engineering may matter more in the long run.

A QUICK SEARCH on the internet for “Philippine map at night” will invariably return satellite images showing the country lit up by evening lights. It’s easy to spot the National Capital Region and neighboring areas since they appear as a glowing streak stretching from Pampanga in the north to Batangas in the south. Metro Manila, at the center, shines with a fierce intensity which reflects the population density and electricity use in the area

THE WORLD never anticipated the global medical and economic freeze from COVID-19, but this is now part of a regular cadence of pandemics that we should continuously prepare for. 

LOCKDOWNS and restrictions imposed at the height of the pandemic saw cinemas and other places of public entertainment shuttered for almost two years. Late in 2021, movie theaters started opening again. In the interim, streaming services and other media stepped in to meet audience demand for entertainment. Are cinemas still the best seats in the house?

MUSEUMS are keepers of memories. Over centuries, vast collections and archives have been gathered to record and preserve fragments of history in an attempt to capture an essence of society, nature, and cultural heritage.

AFTER SEVERAL ups and downs in our two-and-a-half-year battle with COVID-19 and its various variants, we seem to be, finally, in a more stable period wherein we can truly look forward to a prolonged and hopefully sustained recovery stage for our battered economy and mindset.

A HIGHLY regarded industry veteran with extensive experience in local, regional, and global headquarter responsibilities, Vince S. Socco was significantly involved in the start-up of business operations of Toyota in the Philippines, as well as its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore. All told, Mr. Socco has had some four decades of involvement with the brand and its Lexus luxury marque.

NOT A FEW people are saying that we’re now in post-pandemic times. That’s an incredibly brazen idea to foist upon the public because, well, it just isn’t true.

THE support needed for small businesses in a fiscally constrained environment need not necessarily be monetary, with help in digitizing the operations of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) seen delivering an impact out of all proportion to what it is expected to cost.

FOR DECADES, the government maintained an extremely literal interpretation of the words “internal revenue,” taking the view that it referred to the collections of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

COAL-FIRED power plant companies in the Philippines have, in recent months, declared plans to rebalance their portfolio into one that has a growing share of renewables in the mix.