ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a government project aimed at providing land for slum dwellers. In the beginning, it delineates the characteristics of local governance of Marikina City, Metro Manila, in the context of the neoliberal urban governance elaborated in the prologue, particularly since the 1990s. It presents the case of Barangay Malanday, which is one of the 16 barangays—the smallest administrative unit of the Philippines— comprising Marikina City. In the Philippines, national elections for the Presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives, as well as local elections for city and town mayors and councillors, were scheduled for May 2016. Throughout the 20th century, Marikina City has been known for its household industry of shoemaking, which used to provide a source of income for many local residents of urban poor communities. It avoids the blanket argument that such clientelism suggests the erosion of public social policies by spoiling the associations, which are expected to be a tool for achieving “participatory democracy”.
