World Suburbia Quezon City, 1939–1976
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Chapter 2 Modern Living in Third- World Suburbia Quezon City, 1939– 1976 Michael D. Pante Introduction The urban history of the greater Manila area, as it grew from a Spanish walled city to a sprawling multi- city metropolis, forces us to reconsider the traditional periodization of Philippine history. Such a periodization divides time accord- ing to changes in political regimes: the Spanish colonial period (1565– 1898), revolution (1896– 1902), American colonial period (1898–1946), Japanese oc- cupation (1942– 1945), and the post- war era (1946 onwards). Aspects of this chronological framework in Philippine historiography can be traced as far back as the late nineteenth century when Spanish- educated Filipino nation- alists conceptualized a linear, tripartite version of Philippine history that was divided into precolonial, colonial, and post- colonial periods.1 Nationalist his- toriography has followed this way of reckoning time since the 1960s, with some important challenges to this periodization arising from the 1980s.2 In this chapter I examine how notions of modern city living, American ex- pertise, and a (neo)colonial political economy survived the war and early de- cades of independence in the greater Manila area. I offer in this essay the case of Quezon City, a planned city that emerged in the pre- war era and became the capital after the war. Other scholars have begun to look at urban Southeast Asia to unpack the complexities of decolonization, as shown by recent stud- ies on Indonesian urbanism.3 For example, Freek Colombijn has shown how the study of cities offers new ways of looking at the decolonization process by examining developments that are imperceptible at the national level but relevant at the local level. Urban history is useful for studying state– society 1 Aguilar 2010. 2 For example, John Larkin (1982), David Timberman (1991), Benedict Kerkvliet (1993) have presented alternative views regarding temporal labels in Philippine history. For an interro- gation of the notion of a ‘post- colonial period’, see Pomeroy 1970; Ordoñez 2003:86; Karnow 1989:323– 55; Hedman and Sidel 2000. 3 Colombijn and Coté 2015. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI:10.1163/ 9789004372702_003 16 Pante dynamics and the salience of ethnicity.4 Colombijn considers “decolonization [as] an extended process” in Indonesia that encompasses the time both before and after the Revolution.5 I look at Quezon City within the same time frame as an extension of colonization in Philippine history. Although imagined as a post- colonial capital, Quezon City’s ideational foun- dations and suburban antecedents were distinctively colonial in character. In the independence period, American capital and expertise remained crucial in sustaining its financial and ideological viability. Rather than attributing mo- dernity entirely to foreign colonizers, this chapter argues that it was Filipino elites and the middle class who also shaped modern times in Quezon City. Fil- ipino elites brought about shifts in architectural styles and in Manila’s subur- banization. Filipino politicians were also the leading visionaries and governors behind Quezon City’s founding and administration. Colonial/post- colonial continuities do not signal the simple perpetuation of US dominance over a helpless Philippines.6 Rather, ideologies of modernity benefitted both foreign and indigenous elites in twentieth- century Quezon City. That is, even after the end of colonialism, the native elite’s ascendancy assured the continuation of a modern culture that colonialism had set in motion. Suburbanization in the Greater Manila Area, c.1900 to 1930s The roots of Quezon City can be traced to Manila’s rapid urbanization in the nineteenth century, when the country was still under Spanish colonial rule. With Manila’s de facto opening to international trade beginning in the 1790s, urban activity accelerated in its downtown districts. The wealth generated by trade and consequent improvements in transport allowed many residents to build their residences away from the city centre, leading to the rise of afflu- ent residential areas in peripheral districts. At the same time, this suburban upswing was encroaching upon landed estates that were home to peasants. With the change of colonial regime in the early 1900s, from Spain to the United States, the move into the suburbs continued. The new colonizers played a crucial role in the suburbanization process. Manila, the Americans believed, deserved an ‘imperial makeover’ to address issues such as unsanitary conditions and overcrowding in the central districts.7 4 Colombijn 2010:4– 6. 5 Colombijn 2010:7. 6 Cullather 1994. 7 Doeppers 2010..