Urbanity Case Study

In the Philippines, urbanity is viewed with the combined concept of size, density and the presence of certain institutions associated with an urban lifestyle like a town hall, church or chapel, public plaza, park or cemetery, market place, buildings for trade activities and public buildings like schools, puericulture and a health centre and library.

Demographic studies reveal some common characteristics of urban communities: (1) a heterogeneity of cultures with concomitant differences in beliefs and behaviours; (2) differences among group members, with relationships between persons restricted to specific needs; (3) increased mobility, impersonality and anonymity; and (4) people who vary in age, race, ethnicity, norms and values. These are predisposing factors that breed urban criminality.

Urban blight in the country is essentially a result of the sudden unprecedented exodus of people from rural to urban areas.

Progressively increasing difficulties in rural areas, exacerbated by the natural and man-made calamities that the country continues to experience have resulted in massive migration to the cities. In-migration, alongside natural population increase, accounts for the burgeoning urban population and the disparate rise of primate cities like Metro Manila.

This unplanned urbanization likewise heightens the observable rural-urban disparities in growth. This strains resources and creates problems in the internal city and metropolitan area. With the development of the economy through industrial investments and with infrastructure support concentrated in big cities like

Manila, Cebu and Davao, labour, capital and entrepreneurial talents from the peripheries have been attracted to the centres.

These inequalities in resources, opportunities, power and access to social status rewards create alienation and frustration, and develop into pockets or subcultures of violence, which lead to crime.