The Slums of Manila
SLUMS
Welcome to Manila one of the most densely populated cities on the globe. According to author Joselito T. Sescon’s 2014 article “Homeless in manila” an estimated 5 million of its population who are either homeless or live in tenuous informal housing. In the book Planet of Slums by Mike Davis we see a multi-dimensional perspective into the establishment, rapid growth, and perpetuation of urban slums worldwide, particularly in cities of the global south. Davis explains that contemporary slums were initially the results of urban population growth of the 1970’s and 1980’s, the already urban poor, the youth of the rural areas looking to find work in the city, and migrants from the countryside looking for ways to provide for their families
Davis discusses why global cities only started seeing substantial growth of urban slums in recent time periods. We learn from Davis that European colonialism played a large part in limiting the growth of slums in cities of the global south until the mid-20th century. Colonial authority denied native populations the right to the cities by constructing laws that barred the local population from urban land ownership and entrance into the cities, enacting laws against vagrancy within the city walls and controlling internal migration. Freedom from colonialism initiated the growth of urban slums at an increasing rate. The deregulation of economies led to the industrialization of agriculture and drove poor rural farmers into the city looking for work, the lack of infrastructure and housing for the working poor exponentially increased the population of urban slums.
The 1999 article written by J Connell, "Beyond Manila: walls, malls, and private spaces" also supports the growth of slums as the effect of colonialism as we explore how the history of colonialism and the rise of the bourgeois' class changed the spatial boundaries of Manila. Connell first describes the multi-cultural facets of Manila, the diversity of the people, the mix of old automobiles and horse drawn carriages to the sleek automobiles and mansions of the rich and famous can all be found on the streets of Manila. Connell explains that the rich history of colonialism gave rise to the city's diversity in characteristics but also laid a foundation for the continued economic disparity and spatial separation of a divided city.
Davis points out that as the global slum populations increased self-built housing accumulated, growing together to create massive communities without electricity, safe drinking water or sanitation. By geographic definition Manila's squatter settlements are located in toxic dumps and flood zones, trading health and safety for a minuscule place to live. In the Pasig River area of Manila, a barrio perched on stilts over passageways clogged with human excrement is the home to over 25,000 people. In conjunction with the increase in population diverse socioeconomic strata developed. The same space that housed families also became income earning by informal commerce, renting to single tenants and those even more economically disadvantaged than the original occupants.
Again in Planet of Slums Davis also points out that in countries where development of municipal housing for the urban poor has been allocated, housing is often poached for civil servants, military, and middle class, leaving very little for the poor. One example of this in Manila that Davis gives us was linked to the new global strategy by the World Bank in the 1980' s, the Philippines was a pilot country identifying 253 blighted areas for development. The financial investments in housing for slum improvements trickled up to investors and the construction industry. St. Josephs Village in the Pasig area of Manila, considered a successful housing project for the poor, became an embarrassment to the World Bank as every original dweller was gone within a year as the lots were sold to the wealthy (Davis 2007:73). Davis sums up the urban housing crises and the marginalization of the poor as a kind of “original sin” repeated over time by politicians, reformers and rulers across the globe.
Davis’s views are supported by Ton Van Naerssen’s article “Globalization and Urban Social movements. The case of metro Manila: "(2001). Van Naerssens reports the Philippine's history of dictatorships and martial law also contributed to slum growth. The Government viewed the impoverished population as a blight on the formation of Manila as a metropolitan city and a problem that needed to be eradicated by displacement away from the capital. By 2001 the poor of Manila were not passive. They developed community-based organizations that unified the smaller squatter communities into one voice, assisted in eliminating unjust laws and created property rights for the urban poor.Van Naerssens Summed up the 2001 economic and political climate in Manila as an unstable support system for the urban poor.
In Arnisson Andre C Ortega’s 2016 article “Manila’s metropolitan landscape of gentrification" we see a more current view of manila in which gentrification has taken on the global form, a reorganization of space for capitalistic visions and urban projects supported by public-private partnerships. Ortega blames the allure of profit in a world class city for the dispossession and relocation of the informal communities in Manila. In comparison with Van Naerssens 2001 article very little has changed to restructure social systems and close the disparity in the economic gap and spatial gap between the elite and the vast numbers or urban poor in Manila. Today the main function of this third world urban edge in the Pasig River area of Manila is to agglomerate urban waste, unwanted migrants, and the poor into an urban dump of humanity freeing the city center for the privileged (Davis ,98).