Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
MANILA is not particularly appreciated by most locals or foreign visitors for its beauty. People can praise Manileños for their attitude, the many good places to eat delicious food, or the many entertainment spots to spend evenings and nights, but beauty is not the first word that comes to mind when thinking of the word Manila. People tend to think that the destruction that occurred during World War 2 is the origin of today's mess, especially in terms of urban planning, but most of the terrible decisions, all of them by the greedy political and economic elite, were taken in the last decades: 50-floor condos have been allowed to be built in 20-meter wide streets, malls are built in areas that are already congested by traffic, public transportation solutions solve little and sidewalks are continuously taken by the endless widening of roads.
It is in this hopeless context that the recent book, published by Fernando N. Zialcita and Erik Akpedonu from the presses of the Ateneo de Manila University, comes to remind Filipinos that there is still, scattered in the urban hell, pockets of beauty that deserve to be protected, understood and appreciated by the citizens.
Continue reading with one of these options:
Ad-free access
P 80 per month
(billed annually at P 960)
- Unlimited ad-free access to website articles
- Limited offer: Subscribe today and get digital edition access for free (accessible with up to 3 devices)