Caloocan

Before Manila became the colonial capital, Caloocan was where the Philippine Revolution began—and that founding violence still echoes in a city that has never quite escaped being defined by its proximity to power it doesn't control. Andrés Bonifacio launched the Katipunan revolt from Caloocan in August 1896, tearing up cedulas (tax certificates) at the Cry of Pugad Lawin. The Spanish crushed the uprising locally, but the revolution survived.

Caloocan's geography is its destiny and its trap. Sitting immediately north of Manila, it absorbed the capital's overflow without inheriting its resources. When Metro Manila industrialized in the mid-20th century, Caloocan became the warehouse district and dormitory—close enough to serve, too crowded to thrive independently. Population density exceeds 27,000 people per square kilometer in some barangays, making it one of the most compressed urban spaces in Southeast Asia.

The split tells the economic story. In 1997, the Philippine Congress carved Caloocan into two non-contiguous pieces when Valenzuela became independent, leaving North and South Caloocan separated by another city entirely. South Caloocan functions as Manila's industrial edge—garment factories, food processing, light manufacturing. North Caloocan is residential sprawl where workers sleep between shifts.

Informal commerce dominates. Street vendors, sari-sari stores, and tricycle networks form an economy that official GDP statistics barely capture. The Monumento area—named for the Bonifacio monument—serves as a major transport hub where jeepneys, buses, and the LRT converge, creating the kind of accidental market that emerges wherever transit lines cross.

Caloocan tests whether a city defined entirely by adjacency to a larger neighbor can develop its own economic identity, or whether proximity to Manila is both lifeline and cage.