Mandaluyong calls itself a Tiger City, fast-growing and progressive, home to the largest, most modern malls in the country, and host to a throbbing business and commercial district right at the heart of Metro Manila. But it’s really just a provincial town with Tiger aspirations.
When I moved here 15 years ago, it was a sleepy town, with charming rural touches. And in many ways, it still is.
The streets of Mandaluyong are so narrow and full of surprises that my sister refers to my neighborhood as Diagon Alley, from the crowded lanes where Hogwarts students bought wands and other wizard paraphernalia in the Harry Potter series.
Most of the city is made up of tiny streets that snake through low- to middle-income communities and informal settlements, where children play, men drink, and women do chores, all in full view of passers-by. Laundry is hung up to dry from windows, absorbing the aroma of the bananacue and barbecue sizzling on the roadside. The local sari-sari stores and bakeries do brisk business, with owners knowing most of their customers in the neighborhood.
Schoolchildren in color-coded uniforms walk to school in groups or take tricycles that sputter and emit diesel fumes as they go their merry way. Occasionally, a horse-drawn carriage passes on our street. Colorful processions mark fiesta celebrations, and the Pasyon is still sung for everyone to lie awake to during Holy Week.
Buried deep in this maze, in the innards of this Tiger City, are vast government compounds housing the Women’s Correctional, the DSWD regional office, what used to be Welfareville (the state’s institution for homeless boys and girls), and the National Mental Hospital.
Remember when Mandaluyong was synonymous in people’s minds with the mental hospital? Not anymore. These days, Mandaluyong means Tiger-hood, progress.
The main thoroughfare of Mandaluyong is Shaw Boulevard, a four-lane street that stretches from Pasig on one side of EDSA to Kalentong on the other end. Shaw used to have the feel of a private road with a genteel landscape where the major landmarks were the old Ice Plant, Jose Rizal College (now a university), Cherry Foodarama (the original one near Acacia Lane, before it was moved to a bigger location closer to Wack Wack), the Wack Wack Country Club, and the Archbishop’s Palace, along with gracious stately homes like that of the Laurels and beside them, the de la Costas. There were a few gas stations and repair shops, warehouses and apartment buildings with storefronts on Shaw, but as I recall, not many vehicles traversed this once bucolic road.
As a child, I remember going with my family to the Archbishop’s Palace, where my brother and I were confirmed, and later frolicking in its swimming pool with my siblings. In college, I spent a lot of time on Acacia Lane, on sleep-overs and parties at a classmate’s house. The deliciously wicked Black Angel disco was on a street behind the Ice Plant and we went there once or twice. We also taught on weekends in Welfareville, where we prepared the homeless kids for their Christmas program.
When the flyover connecting Mandaluyong to Pasig on Shaw was built more than a decade ago, Shaw became a major thoroughfare, the route from Sta. Mesa to the Ortigas business district and on to C-5. It is also an alternative route to Makati, through our city’s narrow streets and on to the Makati-Mandaluyong bridge and, more recently, the Estrella-Pantaleon bridge connecting Barangka Drive to Rockwell. That’s a lot of vehicles speeding through Mandaluyong’s snake-like roads and neighborhoods.
With its four lanes now having to accommodate many more vehicles, Shaw gets clogged with traffic, and pollution levels are rising. Condominiums and malls have sprouted, with the buildings erected close to the curb, with just enough space for a sidewalk. Clearly, Shaw Boulevard’s four lanes are carrying more vehicles than it was built for, but there is very little room to expand the road.
In recent years, an office and condominium building (said to be owned by the mayor of Manila), a three-star hotel, and a humongous S&R have been built. And right beside S&R, a new and bigger Cherry Foodarama is going up.
While those of us who miss the old Cherry eagerly await its re-opening, I fear having to share Shaw Boulevard with everything else that continues to rise there. Already, car dealerships, fast-food chains, supermarkets, gas stations, banks and drug stores are replacing the vestiges of the old provincial Mandaluyong – now decrepit apartment rows, beauty parlors, carinderias, vulcanizing, carpentry and car repair shops, and other small-town features. The lovely Laurel compound has been demolished and posh townhouses and condos are expected to rise on the spot where history was made in what was once the home of a former president of the Philippines.
Stripped of its provincial ambience, Shaw Boulevard is no longer the charming Main Street of a sleepy town. This four-lane street they call a boulevard is on its way to becoming the choked main artery of a Tiger City that is growing a bit too fast.
Past Shaw, on EDSA, Mandaluyong City has allowed an even bigger construction spree. Aside from giant malls that seem to be in perpetual building mode, condominium projects of the country’s major developers are in competition for who can build higher, faster, and more. Where there were once warehouses and factories, there are now rising so-called smart buildings selling call-center space and glamorous condo lifestyles.
I can’t blame City Hall for its bid to be a Tiger City. Nobody wants to be the kulelat among Metro Manila’s cities and towns. But I’d like to see progress and development balanced with the residents’ need to maintain their quiet, unhurried lifestyles in a safe, clean, pollution- and traffic-free environment that brought us to this city in the first place.