{"id":2571,"date":"2014-12-11T07:49:26","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T15:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2571"},"modified":"2014-12-11T07:49:26","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T15:49:26","slug":"guardian-cities-the-malls-and-jeepneys-of-manila","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2571","title":{"rendered":"Guardian Cities: The Malls and Jeepneys of Manila"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/static\/w-860\/h--\/q-95\/sys-images\/Guardian\/Pix\/pictures\/2014\/12\/10\/1418216823635\/e0a5e3b2-92b7-4d12-8f95-2e4c78a30fbf-1020x612.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"860\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When asked for recommendations about their city, Manile\u00f1os have the irksome habit of insisting that \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to do in\u00a0<a class=\" u-underline\" style=\"color: #005689;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/travel\/manila\" data-link-name=\"auto-linked-tag\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Manila<\/a>,\u201d or that \u201cIt\u2019s just buildings,\u201d and directing you instead to the nearest beach. But knowing that a city of Manila\u2019s size and vitality is interesting by definition, if you press them, they will usually admit at least one thing: \u201cWell, we do go to malls.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And do they ever: the malls of metro Manila, 16 of them qualifying as \u201csupermalls\u201d \u2013 to say nothing of the various \u201ccommunity malls\u201d and \u201clifestyle malls\u201d \u2013 offer all of life\u2019s necessities, and most of its pleasures. These cities unto themselves descend, in some sense, from Manila\u2019s walled colonial-era \u201ccity within the city\u201d of Intramuros.<\/p>\n<p>But today\u2019s largest malls offer not just the usual shops, eateries (usually including at least one branch of a chicken roaster named after the American country singer Kenny Rogers), grocery stores and movie theatres, but bowling alleys, gyms, medical offices and even churches. More importantly, they offer air conditioning, which goes a long way to explaining their success in a city whose temperature seldom falls below 20\u00b0C. (Can it be a coincidence that Manila\u2019s first enclosed shopping mall, 1932\u2019s art deco Crystal Arcade, was also the country\u2019s first air-conditioned building?)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing at\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/cities\/2014\/dec\/10\/manila-malls-city-philippines\">The Guardian<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When asked for recommendations about their city, Manile\u00f1os have the irksome habit of insisting that \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to do in\u00a0Manila,\u201d or that \u201cIt\u2019s just buildings,\u201d and directing you instead to the nearest beach. But knowing that a city of Manila\u2019s size and vitality is interesting by definition, if you press them, they will usually admit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manila","category-transit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2572,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2571\/revisions\/2572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}