Urban Intravein revolves around the conception of the city as a complex living organism, where its many interconnected systems can be likened to that of a living being. The DENCITY design competition sought innovative solutions for urban living given the growing population in the future, and Urban Intravein presents a potential solution in the urban-planning scale. The growing population and density is treated as an opportunity, a future condition of the mega city that must be embraced and adapted to.

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The team proposed a frame of thinking the city as a living organism, consisting of both formal and informal, organic spatial patterns, allowing urban planning to adapt to postmodern notions of complexity as the metropolis grows ever greater in size and scale. Metro Manila is an ailing one at that, suffering from urban issues of pollution, poverty, overpopulation, and fragmented development - one can diagnose sickness, identify patterns, layers, and propose targeted solutions to regenerate the city for greater nodal interaction, mixed-use economic activity, and human-scaled street level life. As migrants coming into the city penetrate into the urban fabric, informal patterns that subvert the formal planning vision of the city emerge that attempt to address shortcomings in housing, community, and livelihood; and it is this fabric that the organic system of urban planning and community-level dialogue must adapt to.

Areas of implementation are identified, where the informal fabric is, over time, converted into regulated mixed-use social housing and livelihood developments - giving the stakeholders among the urban masses an environment in which to live and work to eventually replace the proliferation of unsightly, makeshift squatter colonies. Urban brownfields and freed-up space that result from the restructuring of housing and livelihood spaces in the city may also then be developed into pedestrian parkways along primary roads, river systems in order to enliven and connect the different parts of the city to function more efficiently in its day-to-day.