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106
GALLOPING ECONOMIES
San Fernando and Angeles as
Urban Centers: A Comparison
Both have historical centers and outlying business districts,
but San Fernando is better located and better planned,
while Angeles has reinvented Clark to maintain its usefulness
San Fernando is more strategically located than Angeles because
it is in the heart of Pampanga right where the wet southern
towns intersect with the dry northern towns; it is thus accessible
from all directions and by all towns, unlike Angeles which is near
the northern tip of Pampanga and thus closer to Tarlac’s southern
towns than to the delta communities like Apalit, Macabebe,
Sasmuan and Lubao.
Aside from being host to various government offices both in
the provincial and regional levels, San
Fernando has of late also developed
into a commercial center with the
By Robby Tantingco
Hinterlands (suburbs) connected to San Fernando and to Angeles by public utility vehicles
(jeepneys, mini-buses, etc.), as of year 2000. (Dr. Jean-Christophe Gaillard)
opening of SM City Pampanga and Robinson’s Starmills. Shoppers
from as far as Bataan, Bulacan and Nueva Ecija show up in
the San Fernando malls, while in the Angeles malls, only those
from the city itself and the neighboring towns of Mabalacat,
Magalang and Porac are able to come. When the projected SM
complex in Clark Field opens, it will most likely draw shoppers
from Tarlac and Pangasinan, but still not from the southern half
of Pampanga.
Angeles has a bigger population than San Fernando
(263,971 as against 221,857 in year 2000). But while
San Fernando is a geographic, political,
commercial, administrative
and economic
center, Angeles
grew solely on the
strength of its serviceoriented
businesses visà-vis
Clark Air Base:
subdivisions, restaurants,
nightclubs, manpower
complement,
cottage industries, construction.
When the
Americans left in 1991,
Angeles managed to
survive the abandonment
mainly due to
Clark’s quick conversion
into a special economic
zone.
“Angeles appears as
an incomplete urban
center,” says Jean-
Christophe Gaillard, a
French geographer who
presented a paper on
the subject at the Center
for Kapampangan
Studies in 2003. “The
connection of Angeles to
the surrounding towns is
also weaker than that of
San Fernando.” Only
nine towns, including resettlement
areas, are
directly connected to
Angeles by jeepneys,
compared to over 20
towns in the case of San
Fernando (including