Bangkok – Intentional World City (original) (raw)

Bangkok – Intentional World City 1

From the 1850s onward Bangkok has shifted from being a center of a re-emerging Southeast Asian empire toward a would-be world city. The transformations have come in episodes, beginning with the intrusion of European imperialism to the most recent chapter of integration into global circuits of finance and franchise capital that led to a massive restructuring of the city. Neighborhoods were replaced by tall buildings, toll roads were constructed to link the core to vast new towns, big box stores and shopping malls joined to further suburbanization while international hotels, Euro-design fashion complexes and convention centers began to fill the urban field. All of this reconstruction came to an abrupt halt with the first of successive economic crises impacting Pacific Asia from the end of 1997 to the present, leaving a landscape of empty buildings, unsold houses, planning disasters, and slums amidst the splendor of temples, palaces and historic buildings. Despite these setbacks, as intercity competition for global capital continues to intensify, the government continues to pursue a policy of intentional world city formation.

The Unsettled Layers of Bangkok

Owners of the Map, 2017

This chapter explores the history of Bangkok since its founding in 1782 by reconstructing the contingent and open-ended processes that created the conditions of possibility for the emergence of motorcycle taxis in the 1980s. In particular, it focuses on four elements. The first is a mode of administration: a set of formalized, yet often informal, interactions between state officials, citizens, and territory—the dynamic of transforming authority into influence—which emerged at the turn of the twentieth century and continued to organize street life in Bangkok. The second revolves around a group of actors: millions of young and relatively unspecialized migrants from rural Thailand who, beginning in the late 1950s, provided the city with cheap labor. The third condition is technological: affordable motorcycles, which flooded Thailand in the 1960s. Finally, the last one is a physical setting: the maze of long and narrow alleys, known as soi, that solidified in the 1970s and rendered far-...

Above and below the line: Globalization and urban form in Bangkok

The Annals of Regional Science, 2003

This paper uses the introduction of a mass rapid transit system into the existing urban form of the city of Bangkok as a metaphor to explore issues of globalization and urban form. The aspirations of Bangkok to become one of the world cities in the global economy were clear prior to the economic crisis of the 1990s. The Bangkok mass transit system -the Skytrain -was initiated in 1992 and opened in 1999 in response to major problems of traffic congestion and pollution, and the expansion of central business districts. The Skytrain is promoted as a symbol of modernity, comparable to the best in the world. It was built over existing streets some 3-4 stories above ground level. At this level there are direct pedestrian links from the stations into some of Bangkok's prestigious shopping malls and hotels, and links to commercial areas. On the streets beneath this massive structure, the vibrant chaos of Thailand exists, seemingly untouched by the world above. The streets are jammed with traffic, the footways with street traders and food stalls, and the night markets teem with people. Those, the majority, who find the Skytrain too expensive, ride in cheap buses, and on motorcycles, polluting the streets with fumes and noise. Two separate patterns of use, almost different ''worlds'' exist, one above and the other below the transit lines. The paper argues that both the local and global co-exist, and that globalization may not always be the winner.

War, Trade and Desire: Urban Design and Counter Public Spheres of Bangkok

separate from state influence and market relations. However, for her, the moral authority of the public sphere depends on 'who participates and on what terms'. 3 She therefore calls for 'multiple publics' and 'insurgent citizenship' -certainly public spheres in the plural as conceived by the editors of this volume. Fraser calls for a public sphere comprising 'actual existing democracy' rather than Habermas's more restricted ideal of the modern European bourgeois liberal public. Urban theorist Margaret Crawford has employed Fraser's critique to counter the 'narrative of loss' by urbanists such as Richard Sennett, Mike Davis, and Michael Sorkin. For Crawford: […] the meaning of concepts such as public, space, democracy, and citizenship are continually being redefined in practice through lived experience. By eliminating the insistence on unity, the desire for fixed categories of time and space, and the rigid concepts of public and private that underlie these narratives, we can begin to recognize a multiplicity of simultaneous public interactions that are restructuring urban space, producing new forms of insurgent citizenship, and revealing new political arenas for democratic action. 4 Although written in Los Angeles during the 1990s, Crawford's call resonates with both the contemporary trajectory of public space in Bangkok and the political expression of the counter publics that have emerged within these spaces over the past decade. This paper analyses an emergent public sphere in Bangkok in order to reveal the gap between ideals of public space as representation of power, nationhood, and modernity, versus its social production in everyday political struggles. The setting for recent political demonstrations in Bangkok dramatically shifted from royalist and nationalist Ratchadamnoen Avenue to Ratchaprasong intersection, the symbolic heart of Thailand's embrace of globalization and the home of Bangkok's spectacular central shopping district. 1 While Ratchadamnoen remains mostly empty except as a traffic corridor and a stage set for royalist and nationalist pomp, it has been continuously occupied as a stage for political uprisings -often with tragic consequences. In contrast, as the political base of protest in Thailand widened, the glittering shopping malls at Ratchaprasong became a new site of protest, fuelled by online social networks and in 2010 dramatically occupied by the urban and rural working poor, who sensed they could not afford to partake in Bangkok's phantasmagorical splendours. 2

Public life in Bangkok's urban spaces

The paper examines public life within Bangkok's urban spaces on the premise that user needs and satisfaction should play an integral component in the design of these spaces. An ecology-culture-behaviour paradigm is introduced to appropriately rationalise the relationship between urban design, ecology and sociology. Bangkok, a canal- and river-based port city, echoes the urban morphological processes of early Southeast Asian coastal settlements, but differs in its social and physical construct because of its lack of exposure to colonial dominance. Only in the latter part of the 19th century, when Western influence was introduced and became stronger, a change in its physical form was manifest, but the city still retained the social construct within its urban spaces and activity nodes (i.e. informal, commercial and religious spaces). Bangkok street users and their corresponding activities within the contemporary urban street space are also examined through field observation and survey to paint an overall picture of the behaviour and attitudes of the street users. The Bangkok experience presents a case of a dynamic city with competition between its traditions and the Western contemporary influences on its urban spaces. Finally, the paper reiterates the significant need to reconsider the intrinsic relationship between ecology, culture and behaviour to better understand the life between structures to create an urban space that satisfies its end users.► Bangkok's water to land urban space morphogenesis is examined. ► Pedestrian needs criteria were defined to evaluate Bangkok's public life. ► Bangkok's urbanism continues to be influenced by its strong traditional knowledge.

The Portrait of a City: Lawrence Osborne’s "Bangkok Days" (2009)

Eclectic Representations Journal, 2012

The novel "Bangkok Days" (2009) by Lawrence Osborne offers reflections on the identity of Thailand’s capital and its expatriate residents. The novel taps into Westerners’ imagination and misconceptions of Asia and their fascination with Bangkok. Through a semi-fictional narrative where personal experiences of a wandering narrator, subjective impressions and historical facts merge, the novel attempts to disentangle many of Bangkok’s apparent complexities and enigmas. This paper seeks to analyze Bangkok Days’ portrayal of the city and its approach to central themes which include urban loneliness, the interplay between East and West, as well as the city as a stage, chaos and mystery. The objective is to arrive at an in-depth understanding of these concepts and Osborne’s portrait of Bangkok. Keywords: Bangkok, Thailand, city, representation, East-West dichotomy

War, Trade and Desire: Urban Design and the Counter Public Spheres of Bangkok

2013

This paper analyses an emergent public sphere in Bangkok in order to reveal the gap between ideals of public space as representation of power, nationhood, and modernity, versus its social production in everyday political struggles. The setting for political demonstrations recently shifted from royalist-nationalist Ratchadamnoen Avenue to the Ratchaprasong intersection, the heart of Bangkok’s shopping district. Ratchadamnoen, formerly a stage-set for royalist and nationalist pomp, has been continuously occupied for political uprisings. In contrast, as the political base of protest in Thailand widened, the glittering shopping malls at Ratchaprasong became a new site of protest, fuelled by urban and rural working poor who sensed they could not afford to partake in Bangkok’s phantasmagorical splendours. The paper argues that in following Bangkok’s historical cycles of blood and massacre in the street lies the possibility of finding new forms of urban design and a public sphere not yet i...

Urban Forms and Civic Space in Nineteenth- to Early Twentieth-Century Bangkok and Rangoon

Journal of Urban History; , 2013

Buddhist spaces in Bangkok and Rangoon both had long common traditions prior to nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial incursions. Top–down central city planning with European designs transformed both cities. While Siamese kings personally initiated civic change that began to widen economic and social interaction of different classes, British models segregated European, Burmese, Indian, and Chinese populations to exacerbate social differences. In addition, the Siamese rulers maintained and enhanced civic spaces of religious compounds while the British occupied the Shwedagon pagoda for military purposes and created spacious gardens for their own use. The article underlines the disparity in the provision of urban forms in central city planning between the royal vision of nation-building developed by King Chulalongkorn and his successor King Vajiravudh and the new capital of Rangoon laid out by colonial engineers where the traditional ritual spaces became the staging ground for nationalist movements. In both cities, urban forms and civic spaces were essential in legitimizing political authority. The article demonstrates the manner in which spatial and visual systems colored the production of civic space to initiate social integration in Bangkok and preamble disintegration in colonial Rangoon.