ancient cities

486 Marxism and the City
clothes. Every day, more than 30,000 Muslim
Filipinos congregate in its trading places. The Muslim
Filipino enclave in the district is expanding steadily.
This can be attributed to the intensifying war and
conflict in Mindanao and the national government’s
neglect, in terms of development, of the
Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. About
120,000 Muslim Filipinos were forced to migrate
in Metro Manila. Muslim Filipinos have judged
that the capital region is a safer place to live. The
health facilities and educational opportunities in
Metro Manila are a hundred times better and more
accessible. Moreover, their children are not exposed
to injuries and deaths due to perennial exchanges
of gunfire.
Spatial Markers of Urbanization
The assigning of Manila as the seat of the colonial
government and nucleus of trading activities
of Spain, and consequently that of the United
States, put in place the infrastructure and spatial
characteristics that attract the influx of people in
its urban spaces. The centrality of Manila led to
siphoning of financial resources toward the city.
The privileging of Manila also means marginalization
of other places, such as the Autonomous
Region of Muslim Mindanao.
Financial institutions congregate in central
places where good physical and economic infrastructures
abound. This is evident in the Makati
CBD. Profits from extracting resources and other
commercial activities from all parts of the nation
are siphoned to this enclave. This condition leads
to the increasing attractiveness of the city as a
migration destination for the poor. However, poor
migrants to Metro Manila are unable to get decent
homes. They end up competing for small living
spaces with appalling living conditions. Political
privileging of spaces operates at different scales,
and they imprint diverse economic benefits and
spatial markers.
Some suggest that the concentration of infrastructure,
energy, utilities, economic opportunities,
information, and people in the metropolis will lead
to the formation of Mega Manila—an area that
will incorporate the adjacent towns and cities in
the central Luzon region in the northern part of the
metropolis and the Calabarzon and Mimaropa
regions in the southern portion of Metro Manila.
Such a Mega Manila would contain nearly half of
the country’s population.
Further urbanization of Metro Manila does not
mean development for the Philippines. The social
and spatial transformations that urbanization
brings result in impacts on diverse human groups,
and the gains and ills of urbanization are experienced
differently by those who occupy diverse
places with differing spatial markers. If Metro
Manila becomes more urbanized, leading to the
formation of Mega Manila, the implications for
the future are both promising and grim.
Doracie B. Zoleta-Nantes
See also Capital City; City Beautiful Movement; Favela
Further Readings
Agoncillo, Teodoro A. 1990. History of the Filipino
People. Quezon City, the Philippines: Garotech.
Binay, Jejomar C. 2006. Makati: A City for the People.
Makati, the Philippines: FCA Printhouse.
Diokno, Maria Serena and Ramon Villegas. 1998. “The
End of the Galleon Trade.” In Kasaysayan: The Story
of the Filipino People, Vol. 4. Hong Kong: Asia
Publishing Company.
Hines, Thomas S. 1972. “The Imperial Façade: Daniel H.
Burnham and American Architectural Planning in the
Philippines.”Pacific Historical Review 41(1):33–53.
Hutchison, Ray. 2002. “Manila.” Pp. 131–38 in
Encyclopedia of Urban Cultures: Cities and Cultures
around the World, edited by Melvin Ember and Carol
R. Ember. Danbury, CT: Grolier.
National Statistical Coordination Board, National
Statistics Office. 2008. Population Figures and Gross
Regional Domestic Product at Current Prices of the
Philippines. Philippines: National Statistical
Coordination Board, National Statistics Office.
Salita, Domingo C. 1974. Geography and Natural
Resources of the Philippines. Quezon City: University
of the Philippines Press.
Ma r x i s M a n d t h e ci t y
To clarify the contribution of Marxism to urban
studies and to identify the contours of this theoretical
approach, it is necessary to begin with the
original work of Marx and Engels, before dealing