The city was intended to be the national capital of the Philippines that would replace Manila, as the latter was suffering from overcrowding, lack of housing, poor sanitation, and traffic congestion.

To create Quezon City, several barrios were carved out from the towns of Caloocan, Marikina, San Juan and Pasig, in addition to the eight vast estates the Philippine government purchased for this purpose.

[19] It lacked public housing, where thousands of the city's residents lived in congested informal settler communities, especially in the central districts of Binondo, Intramuros, Quiapo, San Nicolas and Tondo.

[19] President Manuel L. Quezon, aware of the problems besetting Manila, initiated housing projects called Barrio Obrero (Worker's Community).

[19] In order to make Quezon's dream a reality and to mobilize funds for the land purchase, the People's Homesite Corporation (PHC) was created on October 14, 1938, as a subsidiary of NDC, with an initial capital of ₱2 million.

[19] Roces was the chairman of the Board of PHC, and they immediately acquired the vast Diliman Estate of the Tuason family at a cost of 5 centavos per square meter.

[19] Parsons was the one who advised Quezon to locate the National Government Center in Diliman instead of Wallace Field (now Rizal Park), due to the possibility of naval bombardment from Manila Bay.

[19] Together with Juan M. Arellano, Alpheus D. Williams, and Welton Becket, they created the Master Plan for Quezon City which was approved by the Philippine government in 1941.

[19] The center of the city was a 400-hectare (990-acre) quadrangle formed by four avenues — North, West, South and East — which was designed to be the location of the National Government of the Philippines.

[19] The Philippine Exposition in 1941 was held on the newly established Quezon City, but participants were limited to locals because of the increasing turbulence at the beginning of the Second World War.

After Imperial Japanese forces conquered the Philippines during the Pacific War, the City of Greater Manila was reorganized in 1942 into twelve districts, two of which were formed by dividing Quezon City: Balintawak which consisted of San Francisco del Monte, Galas, La Loma, New Manila, Santa Mesa Estate, the Wack Wack Golf and Country Club, and the present-day Greenhills, San Juan; and Diliman which was composed of Diliman proper, Cubao, the University District, and the present-day eastern portion of Marikina.

[31] In the same year, the patients of Quezon Institute were relocated to the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Intramuros and the Japanese military used the facility for its own sick and wounded.

[40][41] Students from these Quezon City schools, representing a spectrum of positions, were thus at the front lines of the major protests of the first three months of 1970 – what would later be called the "First Quarter Storm."

[42] Among the prominent cases of abuse suffered specifically by Quezon City residents were the cases of Primitivo Mijares and his sixteen-year-old son Boyet Mijares, who lived in Project 6 at the time of their deaths;[43] Roman Catholic Diocese of Cubao social worker Purificacion Pedro who was murdered by a soldier at her hospital room in Bataan;[44] 23-year old Kamias resident and student activist Roland Jan Quimpo who became a desaparecido;[45] and Cubao-based tailor Rolando "Lando" Federis who was abducted by armed men in Lucena City while accompanying a group of activists to Bicol, tortured, and then killed.

[46] In addition, a large number of student activists who were caught, detained, tortured, sexually abused, killed, and disappeared by the regime had been studying in the various universities and colleges in Quezon City.

Jose Blanco alongside 21 members of the youth group called Student Catholic Action (SCA), helped convince "the formerly neutral Philippine middle class" that Marcos' powers had grown too great.

[47][48] As international pressure forced Marcos to start restoring civil rights, other key moments in Philippine history took place in Quezon City.

Journalist Joe Burgos established the Quezon City-based WE Forum newspaper in 1977 and in it published a story by Colonel Bonifacio Gillego in November 1982 which discredited many of the Marcos medals.

[49] Media coverage of the September 1984 Welcome Rotonda protest dispersal showed how opposition figures including 80-year-old former Senator Lorenzo Tañada and 71-year old Manila Times founder Chino Roces were waterhosed despite their frailty and how student leader Fidel Nemenzo (later Chancellor of the University of the Philippines Diliman) was shot nearly to death.

[51] A year later, on June 24, 1976, Manila was reinstated by President Marcos as the capital of the Philippines for its historical significance as the seat of government since the Spanish Period.

[56] The People Power Monument and the EDSA Shrine were built in the city to commemorate the event, with the latter being a symbol of the role that the Catholic Church played in the restoration of democracy in the Philippines.

The quarantine was later downgraded to the alert level system (ALS) in 2021 until the state of public health emergency was lifted by President Bongbong Marcos on July 21, 2023.

The city is within the catchment area of five river systems – Marikina, Pasig, San Juan, Tullahan and Meycauayan – along with their creeks and tributaries with a total length of almost 200 km (120 mi).

The highest elevation in Quezon City is the northern tip of the La Mesa Watershed Reservation at 250 meters (820 ft) above sea level.

In recent years, heavy rainfalls from Habagat (south west monsoon) became as destructive as typhoons, triggering floods and landslides which endangers the city's residents living near the riverbanks.

Numerous government buildings were built during the terms of President Elpidio Quirino, Ramon Magsaysay, Carlos P. Garcia, Diosdado Macapagal and Ferdinand Marcos.

Frost collaborated with Juan Arellano, engineer A.D. Williams, and landscape architect and planner Louis Croft to craft a grand master plan for the new capital.

This is where the main offices of the Departments of Agrarian Reform, Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources, Human Settlements and Urban Development (including the National Housing Authority (Philippines)) and the Interior and Local Government are located.

[139] The La Mesa Dam and Reservoir is situated at the northernmost part of the city, covering an area of more than 27 square kilometers (10 sq mi).

On July 10, 2000, the deadly Payatas landslide occurred, when large heaps of garbage dump collapsed on a nearby informal settlers' community and burned, killing between 218 and 700 people.