When the Spaniards established their colony in the Philippines, they organized the towns where the church,

the town
hall and houses of key officials enclosed an open court or plazas. In the olden days, plazas were centers of public
entertainment. It was in the plaza where a make-shift stage was set-up during town fiestas for street dramas like
the cenaculo, moro-moro and the zarzuela. During Holy Week a kubol or an improvised shade is set-up for the
week-long chanting of the pasyon.

At a time when television was not available, it was in the town plaza where people gathered to witness a public
execution or even bull fights after hearing the Sunday Mass for entertainment. Some plazas served as common
venues for public celebrations as well as demonstrations and protests.

As a public landmark, some plazas were attractively landscaped and the usual focal point could be a statue or a
sculpture in honor of a person or in remembrance of a historic event of which the plaza was named after. Like old
structures, street names, and other public landmarks in Manila, plazas reflect the city’s historical and cultural
heritage.

The plaza was the physical, economic, social, cultural, and religious center of our towns
and cities. Manila, being the capital, had several of these. Manila’s plazas have evolved
in the past four centuries as locus of power, symbolic space, and as commodious
settings for events festive and historical.

Today, however, many of Manila’s plazas are threatened by loss of both architecture
heritage and the vibrancy of street life. They are vanishing to urban blight or have been
replaced by newer forms of communal space, such as the ubiquitous shopping malls.

Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim, who was one of the speakers in the forum, expressed
the hope that Plaza Miranda would regain its status as the center of national
discourse and as a popular site for political rallies.

Plaza Miranda is a public square bounded by Quezon Boulevard, Hidalgo Street and Evangelista Street
in Quiapo, Manila. It is the plaza which fronts the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene (Quiapo Church),
one of the main churches of the City of Manila, and is considered as the center of Quiapo as a whole.
Inaugurated in its current form by Mayor Arsenio Lacson in 1961, it is named after José Sandino y
Miranda, who served as the Philippines' Secretary of the Treasury between 1833 and 1854.

Regarded as the center of Philippine political discourse prior to the imposition of martial law in 1972,
the plaza was the site of the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing, where two grenades were launched at a
political rally of the Liberal Party, killing nine people. It underwent a ₱49 million renovation in 2000 after
decades of neglect as a result of Manila's urban decay in the 1970s and 1980s, giving it a more modern
design despite protests from various historical groups and cultural experts, with a monument erected to
commemorate bombing victims and additional architectural elements installed. Currently, Plaza
Miranda serves as a freedom park, where assemblies and protests may be held without needing a
permit from local authorities, and with thousands of people crossing through it every day, it is
considered to be Manila's version of Times Square.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/reclaiming-our-public-spaces-12701.html