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MANILA ＃2/2
1975
Manila Research Tour
Visit to Forbes Park Gate Community, Manila, 1975
FORBES PARK is a high-end residential area adjacent to Manila’s prime Makati area.
I was invited by a Singaporean developer to visit a gated community housing development in Manila.
Manila Airport around 1975.
Photo by author, 1975
Location of Forbes Park
FORBES PARK is surrounded by high walls, and inside, there are luxury homes, a golf course, a clubhouse, and even a Polo Club.
It can be said to be an extraterritorial community for a select few wealthy people.
Gated Community Housing 1975
The gate at the gated community, FORBES PARK.
The license plate numbers and destinations of all vehicles entering and leaving the park are strictly checked.
Photo by author, 1975
A mansion surrounded by a high defensive wall.
Since the entry and exit of the GATED COMMUNITY is strictly checked, there are no walls around each dwelling unit and it is open.
Photo by author, 1975
Each dwelling unit is located on a large site and is often a one-story building.
Photo by author, 1975
Many of the owners of these mansions are overseas Chinese or their descendants.
Photo by author, 1975
There are many mansions that could be easily mistaken for luxury homes in Los Angeles, California.
Photo by author, 1975
Photo by author, 1975
Photo by author, 1975
Photo by author, 1975
Artistic exterior
As I continued to inspect this high-end residential area, I came across a property that I thought was a mansion under construction.
The frame was almost erected, and it seemed to be in the process of exterior finishing. The security at the site was lax, so I enter the construction site easily.
There, they were applying mortar to the exterior wall.
The mortar was made by mixing sand + cement + water with small shell fragments.
After the mortar had dried, the next step was to manually apply the it over the entire wall surface.
Guess what happened?
Small pieces of glowing shells stood out all over the walls.
It was a human-made art wall that I had never seen before.
Photo by author, 1975
The high wall that separates Heaven and hell !!
The boundary of the Gated Community is fenced by high walls.
There difference between inside and outside is like the difference between heaven and hell.
Photo by author, 1975
Makati District
InterContinental Hotel Manila
Photo by author, 1975
Plaza in the Makati district.
Photo by author, 1975
Monument to Jose RIZAL, the national hero of the Philippines.
Jose Rizal (1861~1896) was a Filipino revolutionary, physician and author.
He worked on the Philippine independence movement.
In 1896, he set off for his post in Spanish Cuba, but was sent to Manila in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain during the voyage.
He was then court-martialed and shot to death in Manila at the age of 35, in front of a crowd of Filipinos who had gathered to catch a glimpse of Rizal.
Photo by author, 1975
Photo by author, 1975
My Thoughts on the GATED COMMUNITY and FORBES PARK.
These high walls and strictly controlled access areas are the result of self defence against the high crime rate caused by the extreme disparity between rich and poor.
The inside of the walls of FORBES PARK is reminiscent of the areas in Los Angeles where celebrities and the wealthy live (which are never surrounded by walls).
There are no similar examples in Brazilian cities, where the disparity between rich and poor is also extreme.
Rather, the poorest areas, called favelas, exist as isolated residential areas, and the wealthy areas are never surrounded by walls. In other major Southeast Asian cities such as Jakarta and Bangkok, I have not seen any examples like FORBES PARK, even from my observations of cities so far.
In Manila, poor residential areas similar to barracks are widespread.
When these poor residential areas exceed a certain ratio of area in the city, it creates a sense of self defence among the wealthy, which leads to the creation of gated communities like the above-mentioned FORBES PARK.
Manila’s wealthy cemetery, 1975
Some overseas Chinese in Manila took us to visit the cemetery of the wealthy. The cemetery was also located on a site that seemed to be isolated from the surrounding area by a high wall.
The most regal tombs were made of stone, the size of a small house.
Inside, there were several compartments where relatives and acquaintances could eat, drink, and play mahjong.
The house, which can be described as a stand-alone tomb, was built with the money of at equivalent to a few barracks houses for the poor.
This is a good example of the extreme gap between the rich and the poor.
A luxurious entrance to the private own cemetery of the wealthy.
Photo by author, 1975
