What brought Manila to this low point?

After reading about Dan Brown’s new book “Inferno” describing Manila as “a run through the gates of hell,” I was saddened but decided to see where he is coming from and if he is justified in saying it.

Brown details present-day Manila as plagued with: six-hour traffic jams, a horrific sex trade, destitution, filth, and child prostitution. Let’s look at the description of Manila by George A. Miller in 1906: “Manila needs a guide book. Under her oriental exterior is hidden a wealth of historical material of highest human interest. In the very things that make many places famous among sightseers, she is easily the queen city of the East, and for one who knows how to find the buried treasures, a year of residence in Manila may be one of the most profitable of a lifetime.”

This cannot be the same Manila that Brown writes about! We can thus conclude that between 1906 and 2013, something happened that brought us to this low point.

I looked at the historical transformation of Manila’s urban landscape for the reasons for this dichotomy. I found two things that impacted badly on its title as the “Pearl of the Orient.”  One, Manila the city was abandoned by the rich and well-heeled for the private ghettos of Makati, skewing the mixed and diverse character that had sustained its “Manila the beautiful” reputation for centuries, and leading to poverty and the attendant desperate circumstances.

This was because Manila and similar open environs had to carry the heavy burden that the exclusive subdivisions had imposed on them.  Manila was a community that sustained its inhabitants, where people could learn from one another, where they were allowed to rise in life and emulate a graciousness that they had observed first-hand. It was a city where people knew how to give and take to benefit the greater good.

The Manila that Brown describes is where people can only live in the intestinal spaces that selfishness and extractive property rights had created. People from the provinces also naturally gravitate to places like Manila because Makati and other areas in the greater metropolis have cordoned themselves off by their model of exclusion. A depletion of kindness, honesty, and graciousness has been exchanged for the residential subdivisions that promise status and class. An attitude of looking down on those who don’t belong has developed to the point that areas north and south, up to Mindanao, have exclusive subdivisions, to the detriment of an economy that requires mixed and diverse communities in order to grow.

Second, when the developers of Makati’s subdivisions made their contracts, they made rules and regulations extremely restrictive. No one could convert their properties into anything else but what they bought into—residential lots. This left the commercial aspect almost completely in the hands of developers. But other smart people saw that the leading residential developer was not meeting the burgeoning population’s need for commercial spaces for their shopping, etc., and decided to build malls. They built these commercial spaces, and the mall culture grew to such dominant proportions. (I believe that we have the highest concentration of malls in relation to exclusive subdivisions in the world.) Because only big money can develop malls and as people were restricted in their land-development use, only big money got bigger.

Consider our neighbors—China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma (Myanmar)—who have risen or are rising in the world despite the Philippines being a “democratic country” much longer. Our neighbors are able to move faster and better because they are not hampered by restrictive rules and regulations, and are freer to develop mixed and diverse communities where they live and work. Phnom Penh in Cambodia is developing, with the rich and the aspiring to greater riches working side by side. We, on the other hand, are “blissfully” content to trade our economic well-being and be burdened with so many barriers for the status and class that so-called exclusive subdivisions are supposed to confer. Together with those who simply want to extract our money and blood without giving back to society in justifiable proportions, we have created a country mired in poverty. I call this love of our chains the “Mall and Exclusive Subdivision Stockholm Syndrome.”

Even Mogadishu in Somalia is rising and “open for business,” per CNN reports. Vietnam and Cambodia are receiving more foreign direct investments than us. The Philippines retains a negative image despite credit-rating upgrades and P-Noy’s best efforts.

I wish the government will realize that it is kowtowing to moneyed powers-that-be instead of working for the people’s security. For inclusive growth to happen, the government must use its legitimate coercive power and might to fight for the people’s rights to be secure in their persons and not be abused by the powers-that-be. How can a people rise if they are brainwashed constantly to think less of themselves and are deprived of their right to funds that instead accrue to those who twist the law to enrich themselves, with government functionaries closing their eyes to the injustice?

Also, local government units should use their allocations to guide development properly. Private developers have imposed their views on development (for their greater profit) because the LGUs have failed to fulfill their role in leading and mandating the formation of truly mixed and diverse communities.

Jacqueline Cancio Vega is an architect, interior designer, planner, and farmer growing high-value vegetables in Aklan. She says she has pursued her interest in what makes for real community since college.