The Southeast Asia Neighbourhoods Network (SEANNET): An Interdisciplinary Regional Program Where Local City-Making Knowledge Can Shape Urban Studies

Community Development

The Southeast Asia Neighbourhoods Network (SEANNET): An Interdisciplinary Regional Program where Local City-Making Knowledge Can Shape Urban Studies

2016-2019

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From 2017, UKNA is expanding its orientation to include urban development in Southeast Asia in the framework of the SEANNET program (2017-2020). This new four-year initiative is about research, teaching and dissemination of knowledge on Asia through the prism of the city and urban communities. SEANNET is funded by the Henry Luce Foundation (New York, USA).

The program supports the development of contextualized knowledge on the spatio-human environment of neighborhoods in six select Southeast Asian cities through participative field-research, in situ policy roundtables, local capacity building exercises, academic conferences, publications, documentary films and new syllabi.

The aim of this micro-local framework of scholarly and civic engagement is to generate alternative, generalisable paradigms on city neighborhoods. The second ambition of the programme is to shape and empower a community of early career scholars and practitioners working on/from Southeast Asia who will contribute to the growing body of humanistically informed knowledge on Asian cities.

The six selected cities are: Mawlamyine in Myanmar; Chiang Mai and Bangkok in Thailand; Manila in the Philippines; Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam; Surabaya in Indonesia.

SEANNET is organised as a platform of individuals and institutions under the coordination of IIAS with close working connections with the UKNA network.

Case Study 3: Wat Kae Nang Leong, Bangkok (Thailand) Bangkok is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The has a population of over 8 million, or 12.6 percent of the country's population. Over 14 million people (22.2 percent) live within the surrounding Bangkok Metropolitan Region, making Bangkok an extreme primate city, significantly dwarfing Thailand's other urban centres in terms of importance.

Located in the heart of Rattanakosin Island, also known as the Old City of Bangkok, this community has a comparatively long history dating back to the reign of King Rama III (1824 – 1851). Locals from the surrounding neighborhoods know the “Nang Leong Community” as a place where one can find the finest local cuisines inside its crisscrossing alleyways. Almost as old as Bangkok itself, it has rich and complex multi-ethnic settlements. The community has gone through many phases of transformation beginning with the city’s expansion toward the outer wall of Bangkok in the late 1850s, the construction of the city’s first tram line making the community an attraction on the city’s spine, and the building of many shop houses after the Second World War. The three decades following that last phase of development saw a famous street food market, temple, theatre, Bangkok’s premier commercial college, national library, and the racecourse built in the community, drawing the largest urban settlement in the community’s history.

Today, the community is facing a trilemma similar to many emerging “global” cities. Similar to what is happening throughout low-rise neighborhoods in the inner city of Bangkok, it is facing pressure from the Crown Property Bureau, the de jure owner of the land on which the community is located, to not only “beautify” but also to “renew” itself in order to yield more profit. Factors constituting to this trilemma include pressure to be developed into high profit-margin project with the arrival of the newly constructed metro system that will connect the city to the rest of Bangkok. The old community’s concern over the loss of community identity and therefore its commercial uniqueness, and anxiety over the non-local residents moving into the area.

Research Team

Asst.Prof. Boonanan Natakun

Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Thammasat University

Research Fund

the Henry Luce Foundation.

Useful links

International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS)

The SEANNET program is under the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden.

part of the Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA).