Short answer. The province, city or municipality owns them, but not in the way a private owner owns a lot. Roads, streets, squares, fountains, public waters, promenades and public works paid for by the local government are property for public use. Everything else the local government holds is patrimonial property.
What the law says
Property for public use, in the provinces, cities, and municipalities, consist of the provincial roads, city streets, municipal streets, the squares, fountains, public waters, promenades, and public works for public service paid for by said provinces, cities, or municipalities.
Civil Code, Article 424 — Local Property for Public Use. Read the full provision →
Two very different kinds of local government property
Article 424 of the Civil Code splits everything a province, city or municipality holds into two boxes. The first is property for public use: the roads and streets, the town plaza and squares, fountains, public waters, promenades, and public works for public service that the local government paid for. The second box is everything else — and the article says so expressly, calling all other property possessed by them patrimonial. The distinction is not academic. It decides whether a piece of ground can be sold, leased, mortgaged, levied on by a creditor, or acquired by long possession, and it is usually the first question in any fight over a public space.
What 'for public use' actually protects
Property for public use is outside the commerce of man while it retains that character. It is devoted to the community rather than held as an asset, so it cannot be sold or encumbered in the ordinary way, and no private person acquires it by occupying it however long — a stall standing on a sidewalk for thirty years does not become the stallholder's land. It cannot be seized to satisfy a judgment against the local government either, which is why creditors of a municipality cannot simply levy on the plaza. The protection follows the use, not the label on a tax declaration.
Patrimonial property behaves like private property
Land a municipality holds as patrimonial property — a vacant lot it bought, a building it no longer uses for a public service, land acquired by donation for its own account — is governed by the Civil Code like any other property. It may be sold, leased or mortgaged, subject to the rules of local government law on how such transactions are authorised. Article 424 preserves special laws, and those special laws matter greatly: they set who may decide, what form of local legislation is required, and what conditions attach. A transaction over local government land that ignores those requirements is exposed regardless of which box the property falls into.
When a road or plaza stops being for public use
The character can change, but not casually. A street or plaza remains property for public use until it is properly withdrawn from that use by the competent authority acting in the form the law requires; mere disuse, encroachment or informal tolerance does not convert it. Until then, occupants have no vested right to remain, and a demand to vacate is not defeated by years of undisturbed stay or by payment of fees to someone at the local hall. If you are being asked to leave a stall, a house or a driveway on land the local government says is a street, get the documents on how the land was classified and whether it was ever lawfully reclassified. This is general legal information.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Bataan vs. Congressman Enrique T. Garcia, Jr., et al, G.R. No. 174964, October 5, 2016 — read the decision on LawPhil →