Citiea are focal areas of change, the places where foreign or
extra-local influences are most apt to be introduced into a region.
Building styles are one of the components of a city that reflect these
influences. Most phenomena, however, in the diffusion from their
place of origin do not stop at city boundaries but are diffused into
(or accepted by) part of the rural population as well. lt is our
purpose to examine the extent to which strong building materials,
introduced by the Spanish, have been adopted in the urban and rural
areas.
Our data are from two sources. Those relating to the municipality
level are from the 1960 Census of Population and Housing;z those
relating to the urban areas are from a field investigation.3 Fifteen
urban places in Central Luzon were selected to represent towns from
the smallest to the largest in the region. They are also reasonably
representative of urban centers throughout the lowland Philippines
except for the half dozen largest cities.