2018.06.17. Insights about the Metro Manila megacity

(Currently: In the condo, just woke up.) 

Megacities are defined to be urban conurbations that have ten million or more inhabitants. In the latest UN report in 2016, there are thirty one megacities in the world as of 2016, and most of them are in Asia. Additionally, ten more cities will join the ranks of the megacities between 2016 and 2030; by then, 60% of the population will be living in urban areas (cities and megacities) [1]. 

The evolution of an area from a settlement into a megacity is oftentimes characterized by a rapid urban development phase. As the economy of a country grows, its effect is more pronounced in the cities, as they are the main drivers and beneficiaries of the wealth creation. More jobs are created in the urban areas, which leads to the rise in the number of people living in them predominantly through inward migration into the city and its conurbation. These factors, in turn, result in the development of infrastructure to house the businesses and the people and to facilitate the transportation and communication. In just a matter of years, under such conditions, an urban center may further grow into a megacity, and spur the development of adjacent areas into highly-urbanized zones. 

In some cases, the pace of development is faster than the putting in place of measures to regulate the effects of the urbanization. Such happens in cities with no strong zoning and regulatory measures, or in areas with decentralized administrations. Under such cases, the current needs of the business and industrial sectors, which are the drivers of further economic growth, trump the general well-being of the ordinary people and the state of the environment. This mode of urban growth may be considered as a self-organized process, as it is almost unregulated and Darwinian in nature. 

The south side view from our condo window.
The buildings are from the south of Quezon City, Pasig, and Mandaluyong.

As a child who has lived since the tailend of the Marcos years, I am in a particularly good position to describe the evolution of the Metro Manila conurbation from its “sleepy” years after the dictatorship to the recent surge in economic activity over the last few presidents. My parents resided in Antipolo, then a small town in the mountains beside the capital region whose main claim to fame is as a pilgrimage site. I studied in Marikina, itself still a town back then, but was incorporated in the National Capital Region by virtue of its (then) thriving shoe industry. Back then, both these towns looked really rural: Antipolo lied in the middle of a rainforest, while Marikina looked like a big ricefield by the river. But now, both these cities are thriving urban areas and go-to places for foodies.

One of the things I observed in my local area during the last few years is the gradual encroachment of residential areas by business establishments. An particular example (that many Marikina residents would probably know) is the case of Lilac Street. What used to be a small residential road is now lined with restaurants, and even banks and other commercial establishments! The property prices have soared to sky-high levels, and it is very rare to find houses that are not being used for business purposes. But because the economy is relatively strong, and people are awash with money, business is still good, and it's just a matter of time until the whole area, including the side streets, will be completely converted into a commercial area.

Needless to say, such unbridled growth, while good for the economy, has direct implications on the way of life of the people in the area. The street is now rarely without traffic jams, and what used to be a quiet community is now alive 24-7. I have no data about petty crime incidences, but I would guess the area would be quite harder to patrol than before.

And this is just the east of the Metro, the district that is relatively more relaxed than the areas in the west, near the actual old capital, the City of Manila. In the map below, Manila (MAN), at the middle-center of the conurbation, is flanked by Pasay (PAS), one of the oldest residential areas in the metropolitan region; Makati (MAK), the central business district; and Mandaluyong (MAD) and San Juan (SAJ), which are rising commercial centers. A quick look at the satellite image of this district shows very dense and granular areas in the residential areas, in stark contrast with the larger, almost uniformly-sized blocks of the business district.

Satellite image of the W-SW section of Metro Manila shows fine-grained regions of residential areas juxtaposed with the almost regular blocks of the central business district.

In these areas, other socio-economic problems are more prevalent. Poverty and urban poor concerns are more apparent as you walk through these streets, as well as crime and environmental degradation. The lack of coordinated planning also affects the quality of transportation between the different places in the region.

Clearly, more scientific work needs to be done to understand the metropolis. The country is still continuing on its upward trajectory economically, so the capital region is expected to continue to be "stuffed" by infrastructure projects, people, vehicles, and other things, and the unintended consequences of such a self-organized growth is expected to affect more and more people by the years, or even just months, to come. We clearly need more scientific understanding to be able to craft more sensible solutions to the problem of the ever growing megalopolis that is Metropolitan Manila.



Since I returned from postdoc in 2014, we have been studying the morphological features observed in the road networks of the Metro Manila conurbation [2]. We already compared the observed features with those of cities planned from the top level [3] and with toy models without memory [4]. We hope to continue working on this problem so that more insights can be gained, which, we hope, can be useful for addressing the real-world problems of the metro.

References:

[1] United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2016). The World’s Cities in 2016 – Data Booklet (ST/ESA/ SER.A/392).

[2] M.T. Cirunay, A.A. Paguirigan, and R.C. Batac, Determination of circularity distribution of Metropolitan Manila landscape, Proceedings of the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas, 2015 [link].

[3] M.T. Cirunay and R.C. Batac, Spatial metrics for characterizing the urban road networks of cities with different levels of global planning, Proceedings of the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas, 2016 [link].

[4] M.T. Cirunay and R.C. Batac, Modeling self-organized road network growth using nearest-neighbor routing rules with bearing, Proceedings of the Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas, 2017 [link].