MADE IN BANGKOK:

Testing the Boundary of Inclusiveness of Public Spaces

Dr. Khaisri Paksukcharern

The conventional definition of public space is conceived by local authorities in Bangkok as åan outdoor room within a neighborhoodπ. This metaphor might sound innocent but, of course, no metaphor is, especially when it appears in policymaking documents that have wide implications. The spatial configuration of the phrase åoutdoor roomπ clearly embodies notions of exclusivity, confinement, and segregation of the public space; the phrase connotes a movement from åoutπ to ådoorπ to åroomπ. Associating open public space with a room, i.e. with enclosure, negates the essence of public space as unbounded space. Moreover, the use of the metaphors ådoorπ and roomπ or åhouseπ when addressing the public space, domesticates the open space, with all the gender, political and social exclusions that the mechanism of domestication entails.

Exclusiveness and confinement were expressed implicitly in the classification of a specific set of uses that the public space was supposed to be created for: ≥from outdoor eating to street entertainment; from sport and play areas to a venue for civic or political function; and most importantly of all as a place for walking or sitting-out≤. This prescribed set of activities viewed and at the same time constructed åthe publicπ as a homogeneous entity, with the same need and desires, denying class, ethnic, sexual and age differences that exist in any society. Ignoring these differences and stipulating leisure as the only appropriate activity for the public space, the authorities overlooked åotherπ activities such as - survival strategies, identity performances, unofficial economic transactions and protest. In listing a specific set of functions that supposedly reflects the needs of åthe publicπ, the authorities presumed to know who the public were and claimed to represent it in its entirety. Moreover, it assumed that the public was stable, fixed and unchanging and that the public and its space were harmonious entities.

To critically act against the segregation of public spaces and against the clamp down on street communities such as sex workers, homeless people, beggars, buskers, street vendors and cruisers is a normal practice in many big cities including Bangkok. These groups, among others - can be termed åurban nomadsπ - have the right to act in the public space. Moreover, it argues in support of their contribution to urban life. Bangkokπs local authoritiesπ misunderstanding of public space has influenced or served conservative mind in their drive to socially cleanse public spaces of åundesirable elementsπ.

Urban social cleansing in the name of community and tourism

A bold example is an ongoing 4,000 Million Baht Rattanakosin Regeneration Project. Only a small amount of people have heard of it, despite being such a major urban regeneration ≠ in fact the largest - in central Bangkok. Consisted of a facelift plus a redevelopment of Rajadamnern Avenue which locates within the Grand Palace vicinity - and its bounded properties, with a main conceptual design to transform it into a Parisπ Champs-Elysees shopping street, Chinaπs Lijiang canalside pocket parks for tourists, many existing local communities and their own public spaces are to be ådesigned-outπ. The project has been ongoing with little public awareness and has already been approved by its development committee. In trying to gentrify inner city area, to attract tourists, to reduce crime rate in central Bangkok or the åRattanakosin areaπ or to beautify some spots, the committee has adopted a zero tolerance approach. This would led to a segregation of many public spaces, excessive controls and social cleansing of some existing street communities from public spaces.

Some other examples of segregation in Bangkok that is worth mentioning are:

the cleaning up of inner Bangkok of homeless people and sex workers who have traditionally used the area; the prospective plan for fencing the royal ground or Sanam Luang; the closure at night of Pom Prakarn including other parks to shut out the homeless; the new landscaping and closing up of Lumpini Parkπs boundary to prevent sex cruisers from meeting or engaging in sexual activities

In Bangkok, residential or neighborhood communities often exclude the urban nomads who usually do not have political power. Politicians and the civil servants such as architects and planners relinguish the democratic qualities of the public space, since they consider it to be an integral part of the neighborhood, and not as a space that is exterior to the rigid social formation of a neighborhood.

Shopping malls, a new kind of public spaces

Bangkok has had a reputation for privileging wheels over feet. The main streets in Bangkok present one of the worst pedestrian environments in urban history. Only the poor walk anywhere and to do so they must negotiate tiny strips of sidewalk which are often blocked. Shopping mall whose portals one could experience an inversion of urban spatial experience is a consequence of this urban condition. The difficulties and tensions of public space are eased as one enters a protected realm of consumption and spectacle. The enclosed retail environment of the private shopping mall is the most popular and successful new building type of the second half of the twentieth century ≠ not only in Bangkok but also in many other big cities on the globe. It is in many ways the quintessential building type of the age, embodying new and evolving forms of subjectivity, representation and spatial practice.

Shopping malls gain their economic life through the capacity to redirect existing pedestrian flows off the city streets. A related source for the mall was the department store. The department store removed the obligation on the consumer to be shopping for something in particular. Instead, it surrounded the consumer with a world of possible goods they could and would buy.

The mall constitutes a safe and predictable realm within a world rendered dangerous by both crimes and cars. The mall is a clean and highly designed place in contrast to a sometimes derelict context. It defines a signifier of class such as terazzo paving, brass and glass ≠ and there are no sign of poverty. The mall created a purified environment, not only physically and climatically, but also socially. The mall offers at least the illusion of a vital public life and harmonious community. These meanings are congruent with those of public spaces defined by the authorities. The mall establishes its meaning in opposition to the perceived dereliction, danger, placelessness and alienation of the public realm. The more of the public spaces of Bangkok decline in quality and safety, the greater the relative advantage of the private mall.

Shopping in a mall is no longer a functional task, it moves to front stage and becomes a form of lifestyle, as if one enters a theatre. There is an element of hyper-reality, a suspension of disbelief strongly influences by the theme park. It is a heterotopic environment where a far flung of exotic places come together in a collage of simulations under control.

However, the control over spatial structure and representation is coupled with strong controls over behavior, enforced by surveillance cameras and security staffs. A shopping mall is highly purified and controlling place where anything different to the norm of the happy consumer is subtly excluded. The mall constructs an ideal community with no poverty, division or eccentricities.

These are Foucauldian regimes of ånormalizationπ whereby potential disruptions to the designed effect are recognized and evicted. Variations from the neatly dressed and normally behaved consumer are suspect. Shabby clothes, sitting on the floor or even for long in one place can all lead to exclusion. As everyday practice, however, these forms of control are generally invisible; the årulesπ are embodied in the habitus of the mall. The subtle exclusion of difference melts into the exclusion of overt politics ≠ such as leafleting, picketing, demonstrating and lobbying. Limited forms of managed politicking are permitted in malls where they function as forms of legitimation, reassurances that this is a genuine public space while sources of disruptive conflict remain repressed.

Shopping mall is then considered as a pseudo-public space. As in a true public space, everyone - including the urban nomads - should be recognized as community members. It is not recognized as a place that accommodates more than just leisure activities for middle class ≠ and not considered to be a democratic space as the malls are seen as a too homogeneous and harmonious.

A new insertion

However, there are increasing practices of resistance. One finds individual reversals, destabilizations, and intervention in a continuous play for the freedom elsewhere in Bangkok. There is a new kind of squat, or a åmodern squatπ. They are almost legitimated in a way in which they are a consequence of the processes of de-industrialization, global capitalization, suburbanization and changes in transportation methods and highway construction in the past 50 years. Roads and trainlines run over buildings, cars can drive up ramps to the rooftop of six storey building, the huge volume of a golf practice net billows over a tiny residential district. These architecture and urban spaces recently happen in a rather small scale here and there as opposed to those huge shopping malls.

The urban modernization has created areas of dereliction and abandonment and voids in many cities including Bangkok. An increasing number of planners and architects, through their abundant imagination, are generating these spaces situationistically. These spaces might have been claimed by squatters, in a conventional term. In many Asian and South American cities, wasteland areas have been inhibited and transformed creatively into a kind of fragmented Situationistic Spaces. They have created an alternative model for living and have transformed various structures into multiple-use buildings which combine places for working, living and entertainment of any other functions that have never been co-existed before. They have created åTemporary Autonomous Zonesπ for social, political and artistic experiences.

These buildings are ones giving a priority to stubborn honesty in response to their surroundings and programmatic requirements of any people in the location without insisting on architectural aesthetic and form that is usually justified by architectural magazines or university textbooks.

The original study of this kind was in fact done in Tokyo by a small group of young Japanese architects and designers. They titled their study as åMADE IN TOKYOπ of which Bangkok can be made as a parallel study because of several similarities between the two cities. The Japanese decided to call this kind of åmodern squatπ the åDa-me architectureπ ≠ mean ≠ åno-good architectureπ.

Most are anonymous buildings, not beautiful, and not accepted in architectural culture to date. In fact, they are the sort of building which has been regarded as exactly what architecture should not become. But in terms of observing the reality of Tokyo and Bangkok through building form, they seem to be better than anything designed by architects. Although these buildings are not explained by the city of Tokyo and Bangkok, they do explain what Tokyo and Bangkok really are.

These examples are evident of new urban spaces struggling to resist the conventional organization of those legitimated public spaces in the authoritiesπ sense. The hypothesis is that in any city, the situation and value system of that city should be directly reflect to unique buildings created by classes of people in certain situations and locations. In case of Bangkok and Tokyo, the åmodern squatπ and åda-me architectureπ contains hint to think about the city and architecture in a contemporary sense.

These buildings are neither beautiful nor perfect examples of architectural planning. They are not A-grade cultural building types such as libraries and museums. They are B-grade building types such as car parking, hybrid containers, and include both architecture and civil engineering works. They are not åpiecesπ designed by famous architects. What is important is to be constructed in a practical manner by the possible elements of that place. They do not respond to cultural context and history. Their highly economically efficient answers are guided by minimum effort. Not imbued by the scent of cultures; they are simply physical buildings.

Conclusion:

In summary, the true definition of public spaces in Bangkok has been undermined and distorted by the authorities as well as architects and planners - as not all urban classes are truly inclusive in public spaces. The new creation of public spaces in a form of shopping mall still repeats the same value as they are in fact a habitus of pseudo-community. Their boundary of inclusiveness is rigid and non-permeable for the urban nomads or those without political representation.

A form of resistance called the modern squats or as the Japanese called åda-me architectureπ represent more than architectural methodology and more than just a different way of living, socio-political resistance or way of urban regeneration. The squat itself is vivid architectural thinking. The question of architecture is in fact that of the place, of the taking place in space. The establishing of a place which did not exist until then and is in keeping with what will take place there one day, that is a place; the squat is a place which takes place in what the architecture was and in what it could be; it is architecture constantly on the verge of extinction, always in the process of being created and regenerated. It is the promise of the place and the test of the inclusiveness of cities.