Metro Manila Makati,Malabon,Mandaluyong,Manila, Marikina, Muntinlupa, Navotas, Parañaque, EMMA PORIO Pasay, Pasig, Quezon, San Juan, Taguig, and Ateneo de Manila University, The Philippines Valenzuela, and the lone municipality of ANTONIA YULO-LOYZAGA Pateros. Its history can be traced back to the Manila Observatory, The Philippines creation and reconfiguration of Manila City CECILE UY as the colonial capital during the Spanish Institute of Philippine Culture, The Philippines andAmericancolonialperiods,throughthe early years of the republic (1946–1965), to its GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION becoming the nucleus of an amalgam of local government units (LGUs) from being the A coastal megacity, Metro Manila has a land Greater Manila during the time of President area of 686 square kilometers (PSA 2012) Quezon to becoming the Metro Manila dur- located in the southwestern portion of Luzon, ing the authoritarian Marcos regime until the the biggest island group in the Philippines. current administration. It is bounded by the provinces of Bulacan on In 1570 the Spaniards, who were already in thenorth,Rizalontheeast,andCaviteand Cebu in the 1520s and were on the lookout Laguna on the south. It is also sandwiched for fertile land, found Manila lying on a delta by three bodies of water: Manila Bay on the formed by the Pasig River, the only outlet west, Laguna de Bay on the southeast, and the of the inland lake, Laguna de Bay. A then Pasig River, which cuts through the region. thriving Muslim settlement at the mouth of Its strategic location along Manila Bay and the Pasig River, the settlement was estab- the Pasig River contributed to its growth lished by Miguel Lopez de Legaspi in 1571 as andprimacyinthepastthreedecades,with the capital of the Spanish colonial effort in the bay providing an ideal port location for Asia for the next 300 years (1565–1898). On local and international sea vessels facilitating June 3, 1571, López de Legazpi gave the title export–import trading activities, and the of “city” to the colony of Manila, and in 1595 river serving as an active transport gateway Manila was formally declared as the capital to the central district of Manila until heavy of the archipelago. In addition to being a city siltation and land-based transport rendered and the capital of the Philippines, Manila also this system ineffective and saw the shift to became a province and later a provincial cap- road-based transport (See and Porio 2015; ital for nearly all of Luzon. As the territorial Porio 2011). area of the province of Manila changed over time, it also lost its name to Tondo and was HISTORICAL BACKGROUND regained only around 1859. With the establishment of a civil gov- As the national capital region (NCR), Metro ernment under the American regime Manila (MM) is different from the other 17 (1898–1946), the province of Manila was regions of the Philippines. While they are dissolved and a new charter was executed made up of provinces, the NCR or MM is for the city of Manila. The charter defined its composed of 16 cities: Caloocan, Las Piñas, boundaries and divided it into districts that The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Edited by Anthony Orum. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0197 2 METRO MANILA have remained unchanged. In 1942 during MMDA has become increasingly prominent World War II the president Manuel Quezon in traffic and waste management, and disaster simplified the metropolitan area by merging control functions. Quezon City, Caloocan, San Juan del Monte, The historic specificity of Metro Manila asa Mandaluyong, Makati, Pasay, and Paranaque capital city lies in its democratic heritage, as it with Manila City to form Greater Manila. was the site of the first modern war of libera- This was dissolved after liberation from the tion in Asia (the 1898 Philippine Revolution), Japanese in 1945, and the towns and cities which installed the first parliamentary returned to their prewar status. democracy as a system of governance, and In 1948 Quezon City became the new of the 1986 People Power Revolution which capital of the new Republic of the Philippines. installed a democratic, decentralized regime This decision was initially made by the gov- of governance after two decades under the ernment in 1933 to decongest Manila using authoritarian rule of Marcos. Since the late Quezon City’s large and less populated areas 1990s, Metro Menila has increasingly been (Porio 2016). But on May 29, 1976, Presi- reconfigured by its particular insertion into dent Ferdinand Marcos gave the seat back the global economy through labor migration to Manila by presidential decree, after he and services to transnational capital in the had created Metropolitan (Metro) Manila, NCR. All these forces are reflected in the sig- which united the cities of Manila, Quezon, nificance of new public spaces, buildings, and Pasay, and Caloocan and the municipali- monumentsinwhatusedtobethesuburbsof ties of Makati, Mandaluyong, San Juan, Las Manila, but which now occupy center stage Piñas, Malabon, Navotas, Pasig, Pateros, in national politics, commerce, industry, and Parañaque, Marikina, Muntinlupa, Taguig, culture (Porio 2009). and Valenzuela, to address the call for unified and integrated development in the metropoli- tan region. The same decree created the SOCIOECONOMIC, POLITICAL, Metropolitan Manila Commission (MMC), AND DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE the administrative body to govern the emerg- ing metropolis, and Imelda Marcos, the pres- Metro Manila is viewed as synonymous with ident’s wife, was appointed its first governor. the Philippines and the Filipino people. It is Metro Manila was later decreed as the seat the seat of the country’s political–economic of government. On June 2, 1978, it was also and sociocultural power. Shatkin (2006, declared the National Capital Region (NCR). 577–578) describes the metropolis as “the In 1990 President Cory Aquino issued economic and political epicentre of the an executive order renaming the MMC country.” As the major transport, finance, to Metro Manila Authority (MMA), and political, and sociocultural hub of the nation, allowing mayors of its member cities and it connects the country to the world. Those municipalities to choose from among them- living in the provinces call it Imperial Manila, selves the chair of the agency. Five years later, because state bureaucrats, businessmen, and the MMA was replaced by Metro Manila residents treat the rest of the country like Development Authority (MMDA) by Presi- their vassals. Given that it accounts for over dent Fidel Ramos. The MMDA’s governing one-third (36.3 percent) of the nation’s gross and policy-making body was the Metro domestic product (GDP) in 2014 (Porio Manila Council, which again has a presiden- 2009) and is the seat of political power, this tial appointee as its chair. Since the 1990s, the label is not entirely misplaced. METRO MANILA 3 Asthecenterofeconomicactivityinthe industrial and manufacturing centers; and country, Metro Manila remains the largest the rest of the cities, which became the new economy among the 17 regions. Its annual suburban areas. These developments had led gross regional domestic product (GRDP) to population expansion and the densification was actually growing faster than the nation’s of Metro Manila (Porio 2018). GDP from 2011 to 2013. And, while GRDP Having grown from a population of only growth in 2014 declined just like the nation’s 3.5 million in 1970, Metro Manila or the GDP,it still contributed 2.1 percentage points NCR now has a 12.9 million population (34.4 percent) to the national GDP growth (PSA 2015a), the second largest among rate of 6.1 percent, while the other regions the 17 regions in the Philippines. But the contributed less than 1 percentage point each metropolis has a daytime population of (PSA 2015b). Services continue to be the top 16–18 million (Porio 2018), making it one of contributor to its economy. At 52 percent, it the most traffic-congested cities in Southeast also accounted for the biggest share of the Asia. Though its total land area is the small- national output of services. Its real per capita est among the regions, it remains the most income of 203,132 peso in 2014 was also densely populated region, with 21,000 per- the highest in the country and was nearly sons per square kilometer (PSA 2015a). three times the national per capita GDP (PSA Unfortunately, economic growth and invest- 2015b). ments in basic services and infrastructure However, as indicated in its Human Devel- have not kept abreast of the expanding needs opment Index (HDI) score of 0.777, Metro of the population. While Metro Manila’s Manila is quite low compared to other cities in poverty incidence is lower (11 percent) com- advanced economies (e.g., Hong Kong 0.916; pared to the national figure (33 percent), one Singapore 0.907), but it scored favorably in every 10 residents lives in informal settle- compared to other Philippine cities (Cebu ments (Ballesteros 2010). Urban governance 0.728; Davao 0.702). One of the reasons and management are therefore a critical factor for its low HDI score is its population. The in how cities provide basic services, stimulate problem of overpopulation was first felt in the economy, and generate employment for Manila as early as 1933, and since then it has its constituencies (Porio 2014). attracted migrants from all over the country Composed of 17 administrative cities, as it continues to dominate the nation’s eco- Metro Manila is a body of relatively nomic opportunities. With Manila starting autonomous LGUs, which are loosely to be congested, the elite retreated to the connected through the MMDA. Because of suburbs, resulting in the development of the Philippines’ highly decentralized gover- NewManilainQuezonCityasanexclu- nance structure, local chief executives, such as sive residential community in the 1930s.