Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto is pushing for a broader expansion of public open spaces across the city following a nearly three-week official trip to Europe, where he studied urban governance practices and represented Pasig at a global mayors’ summit.
Speaking at the city government’s flag-raising ceremony on Monday, Sotto said his European engagements reinforced his view that developed countries generally maintain far greater access to public open space — a standard he wants replicated in densely built-up cities like Pasig.
He said the effort goes well beyond the proposed floating parks in Barangay Sumilang and San Joaquin, encompassing a wider rehabilitation program covering parks, playgrounds, and public plazas across the city. The City Parks Office and the City Environment and Natural Resources Office are both involved in ongoing projects under the initiative, including improvements at the Maybunga Rainforest Park, he added.
The push for open space also brought Pasig international recognition. Sotto disclosed, as reported by The Manila Times, that the city was named among 24 winners in the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge 2025–2026, selected from more than 600 cities worldwide. The award was presented at Bloomberg CityLab 2026 in Madrid, Spain, where the floating parks initiative was cited as a key factor in the city’s selection.
From Madrid, Sotto traveled to Belgium under the European Union Visitors Program, which he said he had requested be combined with his Bloomberg CityLab engagement to consolidate both activities into a single trip. In Brussels, he met with officials from the European Court of Auditors, the European Anti-Fraud Office, and the European Parliament Committee on Budgetary Control, where discussions focused on budget accountability and governance systems he said could be studied for application in the Philippines.
