Although the need to plan for larger human settlements has long been recognized in the Philippines' the urgency for urban and regional planning has not received much attention until fairly recently. Indeed, planning as practiced in the past has been mainly characterized by an overemphasis on the formulation of national goals and targets which are expressed largely in aggregative terms and give little explicit consideration to the spatial and locational relationships inherent in the development process. Previous national socio-economic plans, for example, are often clear in defining the sectoral components of investment requirements (in terms, for instance, of the percentage contribution of such sectors of the economy as agriculture, commerce and industry, etc. to the GNP) but generally silent on where, geographically, such investments should be made in order to maximize the achievement of predetermined goals. It is only under the current Four-Year Development Plan (FY 1974-77), with the adoption of the so-called "integrated area approach", where the spatial dimension of investment requirements is given explicit consideration.