The Nostalgia, Disparity, and Hopefulness of Filipino Suburbia

One curious microcosm of modern Philippines is the everywhere entity that is its suburbia.

For many of us, it is a nutshell of everything good and bad about the country. It reeks of laborious public transport, seasonal minimum wage openings, and the perils and triumphs of the middle-class zeitgeist. In more ways than one, Pinoy suburbia succeeds in bringing out the best in society just as much as it succeeds in bringing out their worst.

If you’re reading this, there’s a high likelihood you can identify with the quintessential, Pinoy childhood so often and unrelentlessly portrayed in Star Magic movies and Adarna House story books. You know the sort. Playing bato-lata until our slippers are unwearable. Waiting for the right time to strike in base-base. Exploring a career as a make-believe chef mixing water, soil, and leaves and calling it food. While it is debatable that these innocent amusements could also speak for its rural counterpart, there’s a certain nostalgia of having been able to experience them in the context of concrete subdivision roads and consecutive rows of residential homes. There is something so compelling about the idea of sweaty-faced children enjoying the remaining years of their childhood in a place where economic divide is staring out into the cold, open space.

In many suburban areas (or at least in the area where I am currently living), the somewhat poor and the somewhat rich engage in a mutualistic symbiosis. For those living below or on the border of the poverty line, work needs to be found in order to survive. Fortunately for them, the more comfortable people in society always have work that needs to be done. Think pedicab drivers. Small sari-sari stores. Cleaning and laundry services. In the larger picture that is the Philippine economic chain, they are but pixels. But much like hundreds of big-brand companies and the corporate workforce, they make our lives more bearable every day. So yes, the economic divide is staring us out into the cold, open space, but so is ingenuity, hard work, and the drive to keep going in pursuit of a better future for our community. Nowhere is this contrast more evident than in the countless warm hue color graded suburbs of this country.

While disparity is a reality that many of our countrymen have lived and are currently living, it would be a disservice to the Filipino spirit to say that all hope is lost. I do not want to underestimate our nation’s current socio-economical crisis nor do I aim to tie all of this together into a neat little bow and call it a day. However, I am being fair when I say all hope is not lost.

There is so much hope in Filipino Suburbia. In one of those apartments, there is a 9-year old girl talking her parents’ ears off of her plans to run for president when she gets older. In one of those high schools, there is a teenager devising a project to make clean drinking water more accessible to poorer areas. In one of those tricycles under the intense afternoon sun and in the busy traffic, there is a father working hard so his children can dream big dreams. Filipino Suburbia is not just a convenient place for our minds to wander when we want to reminisce about the sweet years of early childhood; it also isn’t just a punchline in the greater narrative that is economic disparity in the Philippines. Filipino Suburbia is where dreams are dreamed up because they have to. And what a great thing that is.

Filipino Suburbia is a nutshell of everything good and bad about the country. It reeks of laborious public transport, seasonal minimum wage openings, and the perils and triumphs of the middle-class zeitgeist. In more ways than one, Pinoy suburbia succeeds in bringing out the best in society because right now, the best is the single greatest thing we can hope for.