The creation of modern urban form in the Philippines

Abstract

This paper explores the creation of city plans in the Philippines during the early-twentieth century. It considers how urban planning was employed to strengthen an embryonic sense of national character as defined by American colonial administrators, and how the employment of a particular urban morphological model helped to convey this identity. The implementation of ‘modern urban form’ as part of a governmental process to dissociate the Philippines from its past as an ‘uncivilized’ place is examined. Political and cultural transition after the Spanish-American War of 1898 is related to the manifestation of American visions of nationhood in environmental form. The alliance between urban form, colonial governance, the Philippine landscape, and identity production is explored, and new light is shone on how cultural, political, artistic, and environmental forces affected each other.