Blueprint Promises Better Life In Bangkok

[george]

Blueprint promises better life in Bangkok

Expansion of green areas within 5 years

BANGKOK: The new city plan envisions Bangkok as a healthy city where people will enjoy a better quality of life, with efficient mass transportation and more green areas.

The five-year plan, the third of its kind, is a blueprint for land use and development in Bangkok.

It calls for a re-zoning of land designated as flood prevention area and traffic management. Importance will be attached to enlarging green areas, as well as to ensuring environmental protection and public safety.

Manop Bongsadadt, Chulalongkorn University's town planning lecturer, said Bangkok has to accommodate some 20 million people daily.

Six million are residents, two million are non-Bangkok residents who commute to work in the city, another two million are migrant workers, while 10 million are tourists.

The plan divides the city into 10 zones based on land use. The yellow zone is for low-density residential use, orange for medium-density residential areas, brown for high-density residential areas, red for commercial, purple for industrial, mauve for warehouse, striped green for preserved agriculture, green for agriculture, pink for culture preservation and blue for government areas.

``The town plan is not about land use or real estate development. It concerns everyone in society. It aims to improve the quality of life by enhancing social, environmental and economic conditions,'' Mr Manop said.

Pichai Chaipotpanit, chief of the Town Planning Department, said the new plan is meant to make people change the way they live, while land use codes like zoning and open space requirements are measures intended to deter people from taking advantage of others.

Under the plan, inner city areas like Sukhumvit, Ratchaprasong and Silom remain dense business centres with high-rise buildings, while outer parts of the city are marked out as residential areas where construction of high-rise buildings will be prohibited. But eonomic zones with high-rise buildings are permitted near places demarcated for mass transit networks and public utilities.

Five satellite towns are planned in Min Buri, Saphan Mai near Don Muang area, Lat Krabang, Sri Nakharin and the Rama II area in Bang Khun Thien district. Mass transit networks are to link these satellite towns with the inner city.

The government recently approved over 398 billion baht for a train network of seven routes linking Bangkok with the suburbs.

The plan calls for three mass transit terminals. Bang Sue Terminal would link the inner city with northern suburbs and the provinces. From Makkhasan Terminal, a high speed train will ferry commuters to the new Suvannabhumi Airport in 10 minutes. Taksin Terminal in Thon Buri would link the city centre with the southern suburbs.

In addition, a new industrial zone is planned for the Rama III area in Yan Nawa district while a new commercial zone is to be developed on the site designated as a new mass transit hub in Thon Buri.

To keep Bangkok's flood problems in check, the plan bans the construction of high-rise buildings and factories in the striped-green zone which encompasses Klong Sam Wah, Min Buri and Lat Krabang districts in the eastern part of the city, and Bang Khae and Taling Chan districts in the west. The larger parts of the eastern and western areas are designated as green zones.

According to Mr Pichai, much of the flood draining area has been destroyed as real estate developers cashed in on profits from developing projects on cheap land, victimising home buyers who then found their houses gradually sinking.

For the inner city, the plan imposes tough land space regulations requiring developers to provide more open spaces around buildings and to limit building size and height depending on the floor area ratio (FAR). Mr Manop pointed said the requirement for more open space around tall buildings is a safety measure to help deal with fires.

Fire trucks need at least six metres for parking space during a fire rescue operation and the road access should be as wide as 12 metres to allow the passage of trucks. ``Real estate developers want to have their own way. They only go after profit,'' he said.

The new town plan requires the construction of 10 new roads and enlargement of 20 existing roads. It calls for 57 new parks to be laid out across the city, in a bid to increase the green-area-per-head rate to 2.5 square metres per head, from the existing one square metre per head. But this remains far behind Paris, where each resident has 25sqm of green area.

Mr Pichai noted that the new town plan would become more effective when the government's 398-billion-baht train network is completed in the next six years. By that time, Bangkok would have less cars and less air pollution. The percentage of mass transit users would increase from 20% to 50% or more.

The train system will enable people to buy houses in nearby provinces and commute to work in the city. The mass transit network will be a determining factor for the new generation of city residents looking to buy a house, he said.

--Bangkok Post 2004-03-28

[astral]

TOWN PLAN....................

That is a good one, and will have them rolling in the aisles.

[stumonster]

and how much money would he like to complete this vision?

and how much land would be available if you moved the army and the airforce out into the countryside?

[englishoak]

A plan ? a real plan ? I am surprised

Will it be implemented correctly ? I don't think so

Will there be backhanders,short cuts, chaos and a result of nothing like the vision ? almost certain.

[dr_Pat_Pong]

A plan ? a real plan ? I am surprised

Will there be backhanders,short cuts, chaos and a result of nothing like the vision ? almost certain.

I am in total agreement English. Muang Thai has to be the greatest example of the antithesis of modern town planning.

[Up2U]

They're talking about an overall 20 million people per day, of whom 10 million are tourists?

They've got to be out of their skulls!

If that is the premise on which they base the rest of the house of cards, then we'll never see a start to it, let alone a completion. Absolute pie-in-the-sky dreaming, worthy of our Cheerless Bleeder.

[bkk_mike]

Actually - compared to the UK - I've been pretty impressed with Thailand... Things do at least appear to move in the right direction, and you can see progress happening each year. (when I first came here 6 years ago, there was no skytrain - let alone the metro opening this year).

In the UK - if you fly into Terminal 3 - it is 2½ years since the last time I saw all the travelators working at the same time on the way to the gate...

The first one that stopped working - they put a wooden hoarding around it a year ago, and signs about how much money they were spending on refurbishing terminal 3...

When the hoarding came down - the travelator was gone - they'd replaced it with a tiled floor...

I honestly believe that Thailand can build an entire new airport faster than the UK can fix the travelators at Heathrow. - so stop complaining.

At least here, things improve... (witness the expressways, skytrain, metro - all in the last 10 years or so - I defy anyone to not be impressed with the Bang Na - Chonburi expressway - even if it does end where they appear to have suddenly run out of money...)

In the UK, on the other hand, they just seem to get worse... (is the channel tunnel rail link ever going to open?) - I know of one road near Aberdeen with 5 mile tailbacks in the morning rush hour every weekday. - the plan to make that road a dual-carriageway dates back to the 1930s, and it's still not dualled, and still no expectation of it ever happening...

As my brother said when he came out to visit me here...

Thailand is a 3rd world country trying very hard to become a first world country.

The exact opposite of the UK.....