As corporate entities, cities have the power to take, purchase, receive, hold, lease, convey, and dispose of real and personal property for their general interests; condemn private property for public use (eminent domain); contract and be contracted with; sue; and exercise all powers conferred on them by Congress.

However, geographic districts and zones are not political units; there are no elected city government officials in these city-specific administrative levels.

11964, or the Automatic Income Classification of Local Government Units Act, was signed by President Bongbong Marcos on October 26, 2023.

11683 further amended Section 450 of the Local Government Code in 2022,[9] exempting a municipality qualified for cityhood from the land or population threshold if the municipality has a locally generated average annual income of 400 million pesos for the previous 2 years according to 2012 constant prices, though this amount "shall be increased by five percent" for every three years after the law's effectivity.

No income, population or land area requirements had to be met to incorporate cities before Batas Pambansa Bilang 337 (Local Government Code of 1983) became law.

Therefore, all cities created after 1987 – after meeting the requirements for cityhood as laid out in the Local Government Code of 1991 and Republic Act No.

To date there are still cities with huge expanses of rural or wilderness areas and considerable non-urban populations, such as Calbayog, Davao, Puerto Princesa and Zamboanga as they were deliberately incorporated with increased future resource needs and urban expansion, as well as strategic considerations, in mind.

Regular municipalities now share many of the same powers and responsibilities as chartered cities, but its citizens and/or leaders may feel that it might be to their best interest to get a larger share of internal revenue allotment (IRA) and acquire additional powers by becoming a city, especially if the population has greatly increased and local economy has become more robust.

In response to the rapid increase in the number of municipalities being converted into cities since the enactment of the Local Government Code in 1991, Senator Aquilino Pimentel authored what became Republic Act No.

[13] Altering the right of city residents to participate in provincial elections was a power solely determined by the national legislature.

[29] By virtue of Section 30 of Batas Pambansa Bilang 881 (Omnibus Election Code of the Philippines), approved on December 3, 1985, provided that: "unless their respective charters provide otherwise, the electorate of component cities shall be entitled to vote in the election for provincial officials of the province of which it is a part.

BP 881 therefore again enfranchised voters in the cities of Bais and Canlaon (Negros Oriental), and Ozamiz (Misamis Occidental).

Voters of the city therefore were still not eligible to vote in the provincial elections of either Maguindanao or North Cotabato and therefore remained independent from any province.

The period between ratification of the new Constitution (February 1987) and the effectivity of the Local Government Code of 1991 (January 1992) was one of transition.

Altering the right of city residents to participate in provincial elections was once again exercised by the newly restored Congress in this period.

6641 (in 1987),[31] 6726 (in 1989)[32] and 6843 (in 1990),[33] once again allowed the residents of Mandaue, Oroquieta and San Carlos to vote for provincial officials of Cebu, Misamis Occidental and Pangasinan respectively.

Under the same criteria set in BP 337 (Local Government Code of 1983), a total of three cities became highly urbanized: General Santos (September 5, 1988), Lucena (July 1, 1991) and Mandaue (February 15, 1991).

Lucena and Mandaue were special cases, in that because their re-classification into HUC status took place after the ratification of the Constitution (February 11, 1987) but before the effectivity of the Local Government Code of 1991 (January 1, 1992), their residents were allowed to continue to participate in the election of provincial officials as per their respective charters (as amended), by virtue of Section 452-c of the LGC.

[1] Residents of General Santos were already excluded from voting for provincial officials of South Cotabato since achieving cityhood in 1968; they were therefore unaffected by this exemption.

The municipalities of Metro Manila, having been severed from the provinces of Bulacan and Rizal and made independent units in 1975, were converted to highly urbanized cities, beginning in 1994 with Mandaluyong.

Only Pateros, which does not currently meet the population requirement of 200,000 inhabitants, remains the only independent municipality in Metro Manila.

11683, which amended Section 450 of the Local Government Code, making the conversion of municipalities into cities easier.

The amendments state that if a municipality generates at least ₱400 million for two consecutive years, it will be exempt from the land and population requirements.

The Supreme Court of the Philippines, by a highly divided vote of 6–5, on November 18, 2008, subsequently upheld with finality on May 6, 2009, declared unconstitutional cityhood laws converting 16 municipalities into cities.

6 and 10, Article X of the Constitution of the Philippines:However, more than a year later, on December 22, 2009, acting on the appeal of the so-called League of 16 Cities (an informal group consisting of the sixteen local government units whose cityhood status had been reversed), the Supreme Court reversed its earlier ruling as it ruled that "at the end of the day, the passage of the amendatory law (regarding the criteria for cityhood as set by Congress) is no different from the enactment of a law, i.e., the cityhood laws specifically exempting a particular political subdivision from the criteria earlier mentioned.

On August 24, 2010, in a 16-page resolution, the Supreme Court reinstated its November 18, 2008, decision striking down the cityhood laws, reducing once more the sixteen LGUs to the status of regular municipalities.