History of Urban Planning in the Philippines

Through the years, we have been informed and taught in our History classes how other nations have seen us as “uncivilized” people and thus they tried to colonize us. Through those lectures, not much has been told about the Filipinos’ home setting and hygiene. We knew that Filipinos back then lived in Nippa Huts but it was not elaborately discussed. The lecture by Sir Gerard gave us a lot of interesting facts about these areas of the Filipino life back then.

Sir Gerard gave a very interesting talk. He made us clearly see the situation of the Filipino homes back then with emphasis on the lack of comfort rooms. I did not imagine those situations before or it’s just that I have not thought much about it. Feces everywhere, dung smell all over the place, taking a bath with farm animals, doing the laundry with unclean water, I have not imagine much about that situation before but the lecture made us see that reality of our past. We were made to realize how lacking those times is when it comes to hygiene and because of that, the Americans came to a decision of introducing us to better hygienic processes. Truly we have learned a lot from them. I think we can be thankful for their help in imposing cleanliness in our country. But other than learning about the American’s contributions to the betterment of our society, we were also reminded by the lecture of how lowly those Americans looked at us back then and maybe up until now. The idea of white “clean” Americans cleaning the uncivilized black “dirty” Filipinos really pissed me off. Also, because of this thinking, their method of teaching us became harsh to the point that some Filipinos were hurt, disease contaminated areas were made to vanish and diseased people were collected and put to some place where they’d die, that’s just too much. Only people who think too highly of themselves can do that to people who they think are lower that them. The end did not justify their means.

But other than historical facts, I’m happy to have learned the changes that our architecture has undergone in reference to the improvements that have happened in our country. Also scientific stuff such as diseases, hygiene, viruses etcetera have contributed to the improvement of the society.