THE recent news on social media of youth gangs “invading” the streets of Bonifacio Global City (BGC) do not just shed a light on some of the cultural issues faced in Filipino society, but are revealed to be a symptom of the way our cities in the Philippines are managed. These youths, often in groups of at least a dozen or more, have slowly woven themselves into the fabric of BGC’s spaces; skating through the sidewalks and streets, walking down High Street, or showing up in droves at car meets. Footage has surfaced online of BGC’s marshals expelling the youths from the neighborhood, strongly encouraging them to leave the premises.
I believe that not all urban issues have to be sensationalized. They must be analyzed through the context of how cities are built, governed and shared. Cities are after all living organisms shaped by the planning and policy of the people who inhabit them.
Privatized urban spaces
So much of the urban environment in Philippine cities has been given up to private developers due to the inability of the government to take full control of development throughout the nation. As I once wrote in my term paper as a student at the University of the Philippines, “Development is not worthy of the name unless it is spread evenly like butter on a piece of bread.” Business districts such as BGC, the Makati CBD, Rockwell, malls and other similar districts have become the de facto parks, plazas and cultural centers of the public.
We are most certainly better off having these spaces in our cities; however, this has also introduced a complex dilemma — who do these spaces really belong to?
In a true city, the youth, the elderly, the worker, the entrepreneur, the artist, and the politician all share the same urban commons. When a space is selectively curated, young people — being the most economically marginalized — become the first to test the boundaries of belonging. But to ban, disperse, or antagonize them is to confess that we have stopped building cities and are instead building enclaves.
Youth and the city
The recent attention to the activities of BGC youth is not new in urban history. For generations, young people have sought out plazas, promenades, sidewalks and waterfronts to be their stage for identity and socialization. Public spaces have allowed young citizens to test boundaries, observe one another, assert their presence, and seek belonging beyond the home and school.
To frame this behavior solely as mischief is to miss the cultural role of urban space. The more accurate question is: Why are our young people gravitating toward BGC?
The answer is less about delinquency and more about opportunity. BGC offers what most Philippine districts lack: well-maintained sidewalks, lighting and greenery, a sense of safety, aspirational aesthetics, non-monetized public spaces and social visibility. In short, BGC is seen as the aspirational place to be for young Metro Manila urbanites from different walks of life.
While the display of unruly behavior is no doubt an unpalatable experience, planners see a symptom of scarcity: Metro Manila offers too few democratic, youth-friendly spaces. When a city fails to provide parks, plazas, sports facilities, cultural venues, and waterfronts, its youth will inevitably create their own theaters for their social life, at times much to the chagrin of authority.
The presence of youth in public space should not always be treated as an immediate threat; it is a sign of urban vitality. The real danger lies not in rowdy teenagers on High Street, but in cities where only the wealthy can safely exist outdoors.
Great world cities have solved this not through policing alone, but through design and programming. In Copenhagen they built skate parks and public waterfronts, Singapore has youth plazas and community hubs, Barcelona has human-scaled neighborhoods, and Seoul supports late-night cultural districts. These cities understood that youthful energy can be integrated into the fabric of the urban system by having an abundance of third spaces. When these places are made available to all members of society, they can provide people the space to be themselves without shaking the foundations of other districts in the city.
A path forward for Metro Manila
Our nation’s own Subdivision Law, Presidential Decree 957, stipulates that a developed site’s 30-percent open space includes the roads, while just 8 percent of the site be dedicated to parks or real open spaces. By contrast, in Singapore’s laws, the required 45-percent open space excludes roads, in Hong Kong, the 71-percent open space requirement also excludes roads. For the Philippines, this goes to show how inherently profit-driven our development sector can be, where saleable areas take precedence over the creation of holistic shared spaces in our cities.
Urban safety is not achieved by walls, fences and armed guards alone. Jane Jacobs, the great advocate of human-scale cities, taught us that the first line of safety is the informal surveillance generated by everyday public life — what she called “eyes on the street.”
Lively sidewalks, mixed uses and active frontages make crime riskier and more visible, while desolate and privatized environments enable impunity. This principle applies as much to petty disorder as to extreme acts of political violence.
We often confuse exclusivity with safety. But the safest cities are not necessarily the most guarded; they are the most observed.
We can choose to respond to recent events with fear and disgust, or we can work towards solutions. Our cities must:
– Reclaim and democratize public space - Sidewalks, parks, plazas, waterfronts, and cultural venues must be treated as civic infrastructure, not luxuries.
– Design for mixed use and continuous activity - A city of single-purpose districts becomes empty and vulnerable after hours.
– Enable natural surveillance (“eyes on the street”) - Active ground floors, permeable buildings, and lively pedestrian environments are our best defenses.
– Provide youth-oriented programming - Sports facilities, skate zones, music spaces, cultural events, and night-time economy reduce friction and diffuse tension.
– Make safety a shared social function - Security must involve communities, not only guards and checkpoints.
The events at BGC are reminders that safety, order and belonging are not merely police matters, they are urban planning matters. Cities are reflections of our values. When we build them for people, especially our next generation, we can provide them a future that is safe and holistic, in a place that fosters civility and shared kinship between neighbors.
Architect-urban planner Felino “Jun” Palafox, Jr. has 53 years’ experience in architecture and 51 years in planning. Educated at Christ the King Seminary, UST, UP and Harvard, he is the founder of Palafox Associates and Palafox Architecture Group.
