Inside Metro Cebu’s Malls: Order, Escape & the Urban Inequities They Hide

Ayala Center Cebu, one of Cebu City’s malls. Notice how the entire mall sits within a master-planned private development by the same developer as if it was inside of a ring, in contrast to the crowded informal neighborhood in the very upper-right corner (screenshot of Google Earth satellite imagery).

When people in the Philippines think about shopping malls, they think of these places as busy and vibrant air-conditioned multi-storey indoor shopping centers offering a large space for escape from the harsh tropical climate as well as the surrounding urban chaos. I often find myself fighting the chronic traffic congestion just to get to any of the shopping malls of Metro Cebu. As a family member of one of Metro Cebu’s most affluent families, I have realized that these malls are what complete the insulation of Metro Cebu’s elite from the informal settlements together with their love for the private air-conditioned automobile and their private gated communities (or gated houses). My experience with overall insulation from dirty roads, litter, and densely-packed informal areas is what makes the country’s structural inequality so stark to my eyes. With these revelations, I have also begun to see malls as major contributing factors to the city’s structural inequities rather than them just being the places of escape from a chaotic metro area.

I often visited Ayala Center Cebu more than the other malls. I am usually dropped off at the mall entrance that also serves as the podium of a high-rise condominium, or driven inside the massive parking garage underneath the mall. There will always be that contracted security guard doing bag checks and welcoming mall-goers. Security guards are a mainstay in the Philippines, due to ongoing concerns about crime. The mall is also served by its own public transport terminal, for the mall-goers who choose to ride public utility vehicles (PUVs). Ayala Center Cebu looks organized and clean compared to the surrounding sea of chaotic low-density car-centric urban development and overcrowded slums. These malls look like heavenly pockets amid the country’s urban problems, serving as bubbles of illusory urban prosperity.

While Ayala Center Cebu represents a more exclusive version of this urban insulation, the same concept appears across Metro Cebu in various forms. Competing malls like SM City Cebu and SM J Mall however, operate on a much larger and more explicitly mass-attractive scale.

SM City Cebu, another one of Cebu City’s malls. The North Bus Terminal is to the center-right of the image, next to a steel deck parking structure (screenshot of Google Earth satellite imagery).

SM City Cebu, located near Cebu City’s port area and home to the current North Bus Terminal, absorbs enormous daily crowds by functioning as the substitute for missing public space and infrastructure.

SM J Mall, a mall in neighboring Mandaue City. Notice that the mall has a compact footprint unlike the earlier examples, with the presence of a big neighboring informal settlement to the lower-right (screenshot of Google Earth satellite imagery).

SM J Mall, transformed by SM into a Japan-themed premium mall from the middle-class J Centre Mall, evokes a superficial vision of Japanese urban life. It offers an imported sense of order and modernity that the urban surroundings can't provide.

Malls in Metro Cebu are not only limited to shopping and dining (as well as anchor tenant department stores with their own adjacent large buildings), there are also dental clinics, chapels, shoe repair shops and service centers. The malls even have their own cinemas run by the mall’s operator and busy amusement arcades. Sometimes the mall even has its own adjacent office buildings, condominiums and hotels to increase the mall’s foot traffic. I like to think of these malls as their own mini cities-within-a-city, since they have also evolved into today’s mixed-use developments over time. They serve as islands of walkability in what is otherwise a poorly-planned unwalkable urban cityscape. These places are the closest Metro Cebu comes to the organized chaos found in other Asian global cities all because Metro Cebu’s local governments currently lack the political will to build the high-quality public infrastructure that makes these other Asian cities so famously organized.

But the harsh realities behind these massive shopping malls are carbon-intensive concrete behemoths, mostly with little to no green space, therefore they end up making the city hotter than before the malls were built. The hotter climate as a result of this leads to growing demand for more of these malls. Therefore more malls are built, only to worsen these effects.  This leads to a vicious cycle of “mallification” throughout the urban area. As I have said earlier, Metro Cebu’s weak public infrastructure is the reason why these privately-built malls exist. They also serve as privatized public spaces that keep the urban poor out. This phenomenon shows that malls, despite being the bubbles of solution that they are, turned out to be another problem that added to the city’s existing urban problems.

But malls in Metro Cebu still persist despite those harms. They are popular with the general public after all, as they provide the most sought-after amenities in the city under an integrated walkable and accessible bubble of mixed-use development. I can no longer enter these malls without seeing them as carefully designed spaces of insulation–places that have shaped how I see Metro Cebu, and how I’ve selectively engaged with its problems.