Cities of the Philippines
A city (Filipino: lungsod / siyudad / lunsod) is one of the units of local government in the Philippines. All Philippine cities are chartered cities (Filipino: nakakartang lungsod), whose existence as corporate and administrative entities is governed by their own specific municipal charters in addition to the Local Government Code of 1991, which specifies their administrative structure and powers. As of July 8, 2023, there are 149 cities.
Cities of the Philippines
149 (as of 2023)
- Highly urbanized city
- Independent component city
- Component city
45,383 (Palayan) – 2,960,048 (Quezon City)
5.95 km2 (2.30 sq mi) (San Juan) – 2,443.61 km2 (943.48 sq mi) (Davao City)
A city is entitled to at least one representative in the House of Representatives if its population reaches 250,000. Cities are allowed to use a common seal. As corporate entities, cities have the power to take, purchase, receive, hold, lease, convey, and dispose of real and personal property for its general interests, condemn private property for public use (eminent domain), contract and be contracted with, sue and exercise all the powers conferred to it by Congress. Only an Act of Congress can create or amend a city charter, and with this city charter Congress confers on a city certain powers that regular municipalities or even other cities may not have.
Despite the differences in the powers accorded to each city, all cities regardless of status are given a bigger share of the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) compared to regular municipalities[a], as well as being generally more autonomous than regular municipalities.
Subdivisions[edit]
Cities, like municipalities, are composed of barangays (Brgy), which can range from urban neighborhoods (such as Barangay 9, Santa Angela in Laoag), to rural communities (such as Barangay Iwahig in Puerto Princesa). Barangays are sometimes grouped into officially defined administrative (geographical) districts. Examples of such are the cities of Manila (16 districts), Davao (11 districts), Iloilo (seven districts), and Samal (three districts: Babak, Kaputian and Peñaplata). Some cities such as Caloocan, Manila and Pasay even have an intermediate level between the district and barangay levels, called a zone. However, geographic districts and zones are not political units; there are no elected city government officials in these city-specific administrative levels. Rather they only serve to make city planning, statistics-gathering and other administrative tasks easier and more convenient.
Classification[edit]
Income classification[edit]
Republic Act (RA) No. 11964, otherwise known as the “Automatic Income Classification of Local Government Units Act” was signed by the Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on October 26, 2023.[2][3] The law classifies cities into five (5) classes according to their income ranges, based on the average annual regular income for three fiscal years preceding a general income reclassification.[4][5] The classification are as follows: