Families on the Streets: Placemaking in an Urban Heritage Site in Cebu City, the Philippines

Streets are public spaces where people pass through in going from one place to another. As such, streets are not supposed to be dwelling places. However, rapid urbanization has ushered in problems on housing, livelihood, and basic social facilities and services, giving rise to informal settlements and street living in cities. In Cebu City (a highly urbanized city in Central Philippines), displacement from urban slums as well as, lack of livelihood options have pushed some people to dwell on the streets and sidewalks in sites most visited by foreign and local tourists. Through street ethnography, this research uncovers how street dwellers in a heritage site in downtown Cebu City came to live and make a living here. The findings point to the fact that street dwellers have socially constructed and purposely transformed heritage spaces into places where they do their daily domestic routines as well as livelihood activities, in order to survive. This article posits that placemaking by these street dwellers in this heritage site is a process from entering and integrating into the place, appropriating specific spaces into places with meanings for them, building and maintaining social networks, contesting notions of the place, and developing a street culture over time.