Chiang Mai City Plan

[Mapguy]

The new prime minister will be in town today for a public meeting on the new city plan. Please see the article below. An earlier discussion on the plan appears here: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Plans-Widen-...ds-t220318.html .

From today's Bangkok Post:

Could Chiang Mai be people's PM's first task?

by Vasana Chinvarakorn

One of the very first tasks the newly-selected prime minister Abhisit could do is to go to Chiang Mai tonight to attend a special meeting. In one go, the Oxford-educated leader would learn not only the urgent problems facing the locals there (which is incidentally the birthplace of Thaksin Shinawatra, the Democrats' arch-rival), but importantly, how public participation, a stepping stone towards true democracy, has been and should be exercised.

The theme of the meeting, to be held at the Old First Christian Church near Nawarat Bridge, is about the future of Chiang Mai. An initiative by a home-grown civic movement, it is a desperate but peaceful attempt to voice the people's vision and needs to the establishment. The focus is on the soon-to-be-revised city plan which proposes enlargement of the existing 35 streets, some to be as wide as 60 metres, throughout the municipality (80 in total have been slated for expansion for the whole city).

Basically, the people of Chiang Mai do not want to repeat the mistakes of Bangkok. They want a city they can live in - enjoyably. They do not want superhighways that will lead to their houses being torn down and age-old communities severed or wiped out. They value humans over cars.

The process by which the Chiang Mai city plan has been drawn up, however, is revealing of the chronic disease plaguing the whole of Thailand: lack of participation by those who will be affected. Very few locals have been informed of the details on the road expansion scheme, let alone consulted. After all, the draft by the provincial city planners will soon be forwarded for a final decision by the central committee based in Bangkok, which is responsible for every city plan in the Kingdom.

Such top-down development programmes are usually ambitious in nature. In the case of Chiang Mai, the northern city has been envisioned to be the "hub" of so many things - from the centre of northern Thailand to the regional hub of the Greater Mekong Sub-region (despite the fact that the city is not connected to the mighty river). Thus the continual sprouting of mega-projects around the valley of Chiang Mai. The city today boasts the Night Safari, a day-time zoo with an air-conditioned glass cage for pandas imported from China, a huge but arid botanical garden, five-star hotels, and all-year-round releases of Yi-peng balloons.

Unfortunately, the local residents have rarely been asked if they want this kind of progress in their hometown. In recent years, though, there have been a growing number of concerned citizens and academics who seek to curb such expansionist development.

Despite limited resources, they have from time to time succeeded in having several questionable projects suspended, reviewed, or cancelled altogether. After a vigorous series of campaigns, which included challenging the set of demographic statistics cited by local authorities, early this year a community around Wat Ket finally won its quest for a reclassification of the area from the high-population-density area to the so-called conservation-cum-residential area. It has been reputed to be one of the country's first few cases of changes in land use management being pushed from below.

But the latest plan on road expansion has caught the folks of Chiang Mai by surprise - and perhaps a little too late for rectification. According to relevant authorities, the 90-day grace period for public hearings with stakeholders expired on November 18. On the other hand, the civic network in Chiang Mai, calling themselves the Raksa Ban Raksa Muang Group, complained of the secretive and hush-hush way the announcement of the ever-bigger-roads scheme has been presented to the public. Tonight's meeting (actually held in the Wat Ket community) is thus another effort to put a brake on something that could still be saved, hopefully.

A few years ago, before former PM Thaksin rose to power, he had commissioned an extensive nationwide campaign to "listen" to different voices of civic and interest groups. Thus he was able to come up with platforms that seemed (initially) to take heed of people's needs. Indeed, part of his popularity with the masses is a reflection of the Democrats' aloofness to the people's plight.

Alas, as Thaksin's political clout became consolidated, he started to listen more to his (and his clique's) voices than to others, which contributed to his demise. Let's hope that PM Abhisit will not repeat Thaksin's mistakes - and also those of his predecessors from his own party.

- Vasana Chinvarakorn is a senior writer for Outlook.

Edited December 19, 2008 by Mapguy

[cmsally]

Is this meeting today (19 Dec.), if so do you know the time and if it is open to public.

There seems to be no announcement of it at all apart from what you posted..

Edited December 19, 2008 by cmsally

[Mapguy]

Is this meeting today (19 Dec.), if so do you know the time and if it is open to public.

There seems to be no announcement of it at all apart from what you posted..

This is all the information I have. Call Chiang Mai Mail. Then, again, the Mail might not know!

[Seneque]

enlargement of the existing 35 streets, some to be as wide as 60 metres