Filipino policy expert Lamentillo earns LSE master's in Cities with Metro Manila focus

Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo walked across the stage at the Peacock Theatre in London on July 24, 2025, to receive her Master of Science in Cities from the London School of Economics and Political Science. The degree caps a year of focused research on a question that has occupied urban planners worldwide but has rarely been tested against the specific realities of a Southeast Asian megacity: whether the 15-minute city model—the idea that residents should be able to meet their daily needs within a short walk or bike ride—can actually work in Metro Manila.

Lamentillo's capstone project, titled "Assessing the Viability of the 15-Minute City Model in Metro Manila," does not assume the answer is yes. Instead, it examines how such a model might be adapted to fit a city that is nothing like the European and North American cities where the concept originated. Metro Manila is fragmented in ways that resist neat planning solutions. It contains informal settlements where millions live without secure tenure, dense inner-city districts where space is measured in meters, and sprawling outer suburbs where people commute hours to reach work. The research asks how a planning framework built for walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods might address this reality.

Lamentillo brings to this work a background that spans law, technology, and public policy. She holds a Juris Doctor from the University of the Philippines College of Law, completed executive studies at Harvard Kennedy School in 2018, and graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines Los Baños in 2012 with a Faculty Medal in Development Communications. She is also the founder of NightOwl AI, an initiative that uses machine learning to preserve endangered and morphologically complex languages—work that reflects her interest in how technology can serve communities rather than simply optimize systems.

For much of her career, she has worked inside government as a policy advocate. She served as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Information and Communications Technology and has written opinion pieces on governance and urban issues. That experience informs her approach to urban planning. In remarks about her research, she emphasized that cities cannot be shaped by technocratic ideals alone. "Urban planning cannot be limited to technocratic ideals; it must include the lived realities of elders, persons with disabilities, single mothers and children," she said. "Inclusion is not optional; it is essential."

This framing matters because much of the 15-minute city discourse has focused on walkability metrics and land-use zoning—the technical side of urban design. Lamentillo's work insists on centering the people for whom these cities are supposed to function. An elderly person with mobility challenges experiences a neighborhood differently than a young professional. A single mother juggling childcare and work has different needs than a household with flexible schedules. Informal settlements operate by different rules than planned residential zones. A city designed without accounting for these variations will fail the people who live in it most precariously.

Lamentillo is not stopping with the LSE degree. She is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Major Program Management at the University of Oxford, suggesting that her focus is shifting toward implementation—how to actually move ideas into practice at scale. The combination of her legal training, her policy experience, her interest in technology, and now her formal study of cities and program management suggests someone positioning herself to influence how Philippine cities are actually built and governed.

Her graduation from LSE represents a moment of consolidation for work that has been underway for years. But it also marks a beginning. The research she completed in London now enters a different phase—one where it must meet the friction of actual urban conditions, competing interests, and the constraints of governance in a developing-world megacity. Whether the 15-minute city model can take root in Metro Manila remains an open question. Lamentillo's work is an attempt to answer it honestly, without pretending that solutions designed elsewhere will simply transplant.