President Duterte ordered a lockdown of Metro Manila, the country’s center of business and commerce. How the lockdown will be implemented to prevent most people from leaving and coming in remains unclear, but it will sure impact workers. Here are some figures:
In 2010, the latest year on which data is available, @PSAgovph recorded 2.86 million people who travel to and from other areas of residence, also called internal migration, for various reasons like work, family, etc.
Of that, 50.4% were considered long distance travelers.
Of that, 50.4% were considered long distance travelers.
The 50.4% share of long distance travelers translated to 1.4 million people. That means there are those number of people who go from one province to the next regularly. The bulk of those people live in Calabarzon (400,000) and Central Luzon (188,000), surrounding areas of NCR.
The census did not indicate the destination of these long distance travelers but in rapid urbanization over the years, people have moved closer to cities. That said, areas of Calabarzon like Laguna and Cavite, and Central Luzon like Bulacan have become more connected.
To demonstrate how this movement of people from Calabarzon and Central Luzon affected our living, here’s data from 2019. It show that six of eight totally urbanized areas outside NCR were located in those areas surrounding areas, suggesting an “urban sprawl” to those areas.
An urban sprawl means urbanization in one area spreads to other surrounding areas. In the case of Calabarzon and Central Luzon, this is easily explained people findings ways to live near their area of work (which is NCR).
