American Colonial Era Urbanism: The Philippines and the City Beautiful

Speaker: Ian Morley, Associate Professor, and Vice Chair (External), Department of History, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Chair: James Robson, James C. Kralik, and Yunli Lou Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Victor and William Fung Director, Asia Center, Harvard University
Presented online via Zoom on March 28, 2024.
Abstract: During the American colonial era (1898-1946), Philippine society was fundamentally reformed so that ‘advancement’/‘modernization’ could transpire. Included in this transformative process were efforts by the State to redesign the urban fabric. Following the importation, in 1905, of the City Beautiful planning paradigm, towns and cities throughout the Philippine Archipelago were subject to physical restructuring. Notably, from circa 1919, efforts to reshape the form and meaning of the colonial built environment was undertaken by Filipinos. Indeed, the use of the City Beautiful planning model continued all the way into the Commonwealth Era (beginning in 1935), i.e. long after its use had ended in North America. In this online presentation an overview of the City Beautiful planning chronicle in the Philippines is introduced, and explicated. Accordingly, the alliance between the design of the Philippine built fabric, colonial rule, and decolonization will be tendered.
Biography of the speaker: Ian Morley is Associate Professor, and Vice Chair (External), of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Department of History. He had authored three monographs on American colonial urbanism in the Philippines, his most recent book being Remodelling to Prepare for Independence: The Philippine Commonwealth, Decolonisation, Cities and Public Works, c. 1935-46 (Routledge, 2023). Presently, he is the International Planning History Society’s (IPHS) Vice President, and, in mid-2024, will co-convene the IPHS’s biennial conference in Hong Kong.