MANILA SLUMS: ANALYZING THE MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES OF THE PHILIPPINES AS AN URBAN LANDSCAPE

This article was submitted as a paper for Introduction to Urban Development. Freedom Lapuz, all rights reserved. This article may not be used to train AI.

1.  Introduction

Metro Manila has been considered the most densely populated city in the world for over a decade according to the World Population Review (2025). Due to many families leaving their rural lives in search of better opportunities- Metro Manila became a hotspot for a promising future for working-class and poverty-stricken people. Unfortunately, the city does not have adequate housing for this migration. This results in unplanned DIY houses forming (referred to as ‘slums’) at the city’s waterfront and outskirt areas. The nature of these communities is inherently informal, and they are often marginalized due to the Philippine government’s lack of action. Furthermore, the inadequate infrastructure and planning for typhoons have become a hot button issue for the nation. All levels of government use the Metro Manila slums as a scapegoat for their failures and uses it as a justification for slum clearance. The lack of urban planning by both the federal and municipal governments resulted in an informal community that relies on unplanned housing and DIY urbanism. These communities are often the target for blaming crime increase or failed disaster measures, but in reality- they are made up of struggling families that are in search of a better life.

2.      Rural migration into Metro Manila

The Philippines’s reliance on rapid urbanization has alienated rural economies to the point where constituents could no longer sustain their way of living. Rural migration into Metro Manila is the only option rural families have due to the lack of government investments and support. In the 1980s, the Manila Bay’s port area became a desirable place for job opportunities for the rural population and city dwellers of the Philippines. Filipinos were able to find work in “waste recycling and private transit” (McFarlane et al., 2025, p. 1224) that required little to no qualifications. Since the government did not invest in any planning for housing in the area, residents relied on making their own dwellings and formed their own informal community. Today, the area is now called “Barangay 105”- better known as “Happyland” (McFarlane et al., 2025, p. 1224). Today, Happyland is still a mostly informal community that is run by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

3.      Urban slum layout

With a 52,335/km² population density (City Population, 2024), Barangay 105 is considerably an area with an extremely high population density that is hazardous and unsafe. The layout of the slums is separated into two areas: “the neighbourhood and the market” (McFarlane et al., 2025, p. 1228, 1229).

The neighbourhood is an organically grown community without the supervision or approval of the local government. Its density is a combination of tight gridline patterns for roads, a congestion of people, and buildings encroaching the street or lanes. Access to automobiles is limited due to the narrow spaces of Happyland. The common vehicles that can be found are carts, motorcycles, and trucks. Constituents have found the traffic flow of these vehicles to be hazardous due to the lack of greenspaces and playgrounds. A resident of Happyland described the challenges of overcrowding is “children getting into accidents as [they] play amidst the traffic” (McFarlane et al., 2025, p. 1228, 1229). The neighbourhood does not only house humans, but animals as well. The same resident reveals that dogs are common in the neighbourhood describing that walking everywhere is a “battle to pass through” (McFarlane et al., 2025, p. 1228, 1229) due to the dogs being aggressive. In addition, cats were brought into the area due to a large number of rodents. This lack of proper animal care in the neighbourhood has resulted in unsanitary living conditions. The area is also a place where privacy barely exists. Residents are often overheard having conversations due to the lack of proper walls and tight dwellings. It is a common stereotype for Filipinos to be nosy, and the high-density dwellings might have some correlation towards this claim. In Philippine pop culture, it is understood that a person who is always talking about other people’s business is referred to as a ‘chismosa’. Philippine magazine, Esquire PH (2019), even analyzes online forums that claim the country does not have any serial killers due to chismosa culture. Metro Manila being the mostly dense city in the Philippines- this is not surprising. Dense housing communities are made with thin walls and side-to-side dwellings. The lack of privacy results in people talking about each other’s personal business and is a natural human instinct.

The market is a congested space that is largely informal and intensely used. In Happyland, Divisoria is the most densely populated area due to its legacy for having vendors selling cheap knockoffs of high luxury brands and offers an affordable spot for tourists to shop. McFarlane (2025) interviews Joel- a hawker who sells pomelo from a wooden cart located in the heart of Divisoria. Joel reveals that due to the dense population of vendors in the area, it is often a struggle to find a piece of urban space to sell his fruits. The streets are the valued as the best place to be as a hawker due to the intense amount of foot traffic it experiences especially during the weekends. Joel and other vendors are always competing with each other for these spaces, and they are also in the lookout for possible obstructions that they potentially can generate. The dense nature of Divisoria has raised concerns about safety for residents, vendors, and visitors. Some residents recall being held at knifepoint behind a market stands, and others describe stealing as a common occurrence in the area. In addition, groping is common towards the women in the area and has caused great anxiety for females to be mobile around Divisoria. Happyland has no formal infrastructure for police and health, therefore they have to rely on the NGO officers called ‘tanods’. However, this has proven to be ineffective due to its lack of structure and funding. The market is no doubt a very dangerous place for people, yet the Philippine government has not invested or planned anything for the area. The overcrowding and crime are alarming issues that should be dealt with immediately. Furthermore, NGOs are not enough to have authority over a heavily dense area such as Divisoria. Local governments must have democratic and established institutions to properly lead an area. Lastly, local governments must slowly integrate a formal system for the market to generate income for infrastructure.

4.      Slums as a scapegoat

Alvarez and Cardenas (2019) critique the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) of the Philippines on how it tends to blame slums for the failures of such systems, and how the results of the disasters are often the basis of evicting the informal communities. Their research focuses on the tropical typhoon ‘Ondoy’ that hit the inner cities of the Philippines during the rainy season in 2009. It was a catastrophic storm that affected “Manila’s 1,705 barangays (villages)- a total of 303,104 persons” (Alvares & Cardenas, 2019, p. 232). Furthermore, the “Philippines sustained US $4.38 billion worth of damage and losses, a figure equivalent to 2.7% of its gross domestic product” (Alvares & Cardenas, 2019, p. 234). In total, “241 people died in Manila, and 14 836 homes were destroyed” (Alvares & Cardenas, 2019, p. 234) due to the floods. The examination of the disaster soon commenced after the storm passed. Policies were presented to solidify stronger DRM systems Philippines, and premised on the eviction of slum dwellers across Manila to ensure a functioning plan.

The Philippines has had a slum problem for decades. A “world Bank-funded plan dating back to 1977 to ‘rid Metro Manila of tens of thousands of informal settlers” (Alvares & Cardenas, 2019, p. 237) was presented decades before the Ondoy storm hit the country. Unfortunately, due to the catastrophic results of the floods and storms- it validated slum clearance. Although studies have shown that the flooding in Manila was due to the floodway’s failures, it has been an annual event for governments to blame the perennial floods of the Philippines towards the squatters. During the slum clearance of Manila, slum dwellers were relocated to vulnerable and undesirable places. To no one’s surprise, instead of building better floodway systems near the Marikina River and Manila Bay, private developers started building “malls, luxury condominiums, gated residential developments and mixed-use enclaves for Manila’s upper and middle classes” (Alvares & Cardenas, 2019, p. 241) along the shores of the water. It is an injustice for the marginalized and informal communities of the area, as they were relocated to areas that were somehow even worse than the slums they lived in.

5.      Slum resistance

The urban renewal for Metro Manila since the beginning of the 21st century always favoured corporate investments rather than helping its growing informal communities. Manila’s suburban expansion and the government’s willingness to clear slums without proper relocation is unfortunately a common occurrence. Despite the intimidation and harassment slum-dwellers face everyday in Manila- they remain resilient. Garrido’s (2013) research finds that segregating the slums from nearby housing developments are growing exponentially. It is no surprise that slum-dwellers of Manila come from a struggling working-class background. Separated by only a few meters from these informal communities- gated neighbourhoods are made up of upper-middle class to high-class people that constantly push for the eradication of slums that are near their homes. Despite the constant push for clearance, there are many ways slum-dwellers resist to such actions. A trend that exists in all slum communities of the Philippines is urban micro gardens. Andal (2023) found that slum-dwellers in the Philippines planted seeds they have found in the garbage or from leftover food to create sustainable plants for the community. Furthermore, despite the government placing infrastructure that “permeates through the city’s informal spaces” (Andal, 2023, pg. 8), slum-dwellers are able to adapt by rebuilding cleared dwellings or relocating community spaces. The resistance of marginalized communities exists worldwide. The slums of the Philippines are no different. The lack of government planning and investment towards these informal areas are the main cause of hardships in the community, but the people remain hopeful and resilient.

6.      Conclusion

Overall, the slums of Metro Manila are a result of poor urban planning from the government of the Philippines. The migration of rural families into Metro Manila is not the fault of failed farming or businesses, but rather, a failure of the agricultural department of the country’s government. The rapid growth of Happyland should have been dealt with decades ago by providing a properly functioning local government and adequate housing. The benefit of having this system is a formal economy that can be used to develop and maintain infrastructures for the area. However, due to the planning failures of the city- the slums became a mere scapegoat for most of Metro Manila’s problems. The dense slums of the city became a go-to alibi for insufficient flooding measures and is used to justify clearance. It was clear that it was never meant for better disaster readiness- but rather, for corporate investments. Lastly, urban slums are resilient. Despite the hardships they go through everyday due to systematic oppression, they maintain practices that help their communities thrive. The informal neighbourhoods of Metro Manila’s slums are a product of government apathy and remains to be a struggling site for families that are seeking for a better life.

Works Cited

Andal, A. G. (2023). Children and urban vitalism amidst transitions: Perspectives from slum‑dwelling children in the Philippines. Cities, 135, 104221.

City Population. (2024). Barangay 105 (Tondo, Manila City, Philippines): Population statistics. https://www.citypopulation.de/en/philippines/manilacity/admin/tondo/133901105__barangay_105/

De Guzman, N. (2019, February 3). This is why there are no serial killers in the Philippines. Esquire Philippines.

Garrido, M. (2020). The sense of place behind segregating practices: An ethnographic approach to the symbolic partitioning of Metro Manila. Philippine Sociological Review, 68(1), 1–24.

McFarlane, C. Saguin, K. & Cunanan, K. (2025). Density textures: The crowd, everyday life, and urban poverty in Manila. Urban Geography, 46(5), 1222–1241.

Shatkin, G. (2019). Evicting slums, “building back better”: Resiliency revanchism and disaster risk management in Manila. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 43(2), 227–244.

World Population Review. (2025). Population density by city. World Population Review.

October 23, 2026