I looked for every Philippine city's land use plan online. I could confirm 18 of 149.

By Landon Little, Founder & CEO of Zentarai Labs

Every Philippine city is supposed to have a Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP). It decides what can be built where, which areas flood, and where a city expects to grow. If you're buying a lot, opening a business, or asking why a subdivision is going up next to a creek, it's the document you'd want to read.

So I checked how many of the country's 149 cities put theirs online.

What we found

We could confirm at least part of the plan for 18 cities, or 12% of all 149. Among the 116 cities whose sites we could actually read, that's about 16%. Add zoning documents and it's 28 cities, or 24% of those 116.

Full plan online

Part of the plan online

"Part" can be small: Talisay's entry is a single land use map. Lipa and Danao host their files on Google Drive, linked from their official sites.

Being online doesn't always mean current

Of the 18 plans, 7 carry a planning period that has already ended: Tanauan (2025), San Jose del Monte (2025), Tacloban (2025), Navotas (2025), Quezon City (2025), Talisay (Negros Occidental) (2020), Alaminos (2004). That doesn't mean those cities have no newer plan. Caloocan posted a notice of hearings on a proposed 2026-2035 plan, and Iriga reported receiving its approved 2023-2032 plan. It does mean the version a resident can read may not be the one in force.

What this doesn't show

This measures what's online, not what exists. A city with nothing on its website may have an approved plan on a shelf and give you a copy if you ask. "Nothing found" means we didn't find it, not that it isn't there. Some sites blocked automated reading, others were down, and some on-site searches are weak, so the real number is probably somewhat higher than 18.

How we did it

We used AI research agents, then checked their work. For each city, one agent looked for the official website and searched for the plan. A second agent independently opened each document link and retried the blank results. Sites the agents couldn't read got a further pass in a regular browser. Only official city, provincial or national government sites counted. Scribd, university theses, consultants and news sites did not.

The agents hit search limits on many cities, and an earlier check of a smaller group missed Lipa's plan entirely. That's a good reminder of how hard these documents are to find, and that we'll have missed some here too.

The full city-by-city list is in the CSV. If we got your city wrong, tell me at [email protected] with a link and I'll correct it.

Why I care

I'm building NovaGovAI, software for Philippine local government planning offices, so I have an interest here and you should know that. Planning offices are doing hard work with thin tools. Part of the gap is simply that plans are hard to publish, update and find. Cities like Lipa and Bacolod show it can be done.

NovaGovAI is pre-pilot and has no LGU customers yet. More on what a CLUP is: the CLUP, explained.

Questions

How many Philippine cities publish their land use plan online?

We could confirm at least part of the Comprehensive Land Use Plan on an official website for 18 of 149 cities, as of November 7, 2026. 10 had the full plan. The real number is probably somewhat higher, because 33 sites could not be inspected.

Does "nothing found" mean a city has no CLUP?

No. This study measures what is online, not what exists. A city may have an approved plan on file and share it on request.

How can a city correct its entry?

Email [email protected] with a link to the document on an official site, and the entry will be corrected.