Middle-class expansion and new consumption patterns have increasingly become an important focus of studies of the development and change in newly industrialized and middle-income-developing East and South East Asian countries. However,there is still a dearth of studies in the literature particularly focusing on middle-class travel patterns, predispositions and transport policy preferences. Nor have the implications of these factors on current transport and land development policy been examined. The present exploratory study addresses this gap by examining three cases in Bangkok, Thailand, which in recent decades witnessed dramatic middle-class expansion, an increase in private motor vehicle population, and spatial diffusion of middle-class residences into lower-density zones in the suburbs. By mainly employing a survey method of data-gathering and quantitative research analysis, the paper discusses the following findings: (1) that middle-class travel behaviour is characterized by a high dependence on private motor vehicle travel and 'inward commuting'; (2) that middleclass preferences for transport mode and attitudes about remedial policy options are generally protective of their members' car-dependence and ownership; and (3) that present policy measures of the Thai government on Bangkok transport perfectly fit and support exclusively middle-and upper-class predispositions and stakes in mobility.These findings in a developing country city basically follow a similar profile to be found in middle-class-dominant transport patterns and urban form in a number of North American cities. This paper further argues that in a developing country city such as Bangkok, where marked social differentiation and the combined population of poor and low-income classes still comprise almost half of the urban social landscape despite an expanding middle-class, an adequate and good public transport system that also meets the former's need for efficient mobility is an imperative.
Current international discussions on the increasingly critical levels of carbon emissions from the transportation sector commonly attribute the causality chain to urban sprawl growth-private car use-carbon emission. An often assumed development context of this causality chain is that common of developed country urbanization. However, in the particular context of developing country urbanization, urban sprawl and associated workplace-home distanciation may lead to more intensive use by the urban workforce of public mass transportation system, instead of higher dependence on private vehicle travel. Thus, the source of the rise in carbon emission may actually be the public transportation system. Utilizing mixed methods, combining quantitative (origin-destination matrices) and qualitative data gathering and analysis, the authors present a case study in Metro Manila which has been experiencing sprawl and increasing costs and unaffordability of land and housing in the workforce's vicinity of employment. This, in turn, causes greater distances of daily travel between home and workplace using public transportation system. When the latter is characterized by fuel-inefficient small vehicles with second-hand engines, higher carbon emission results. We argue that the convergence of multiple interacting factors such as urban sprawl, lack of affordability of housing near the centres of employment, high dependence of commuters on public transports, longer distance travel by commuters, and low fuel efficiency of the public utility vehicles primarily causes the increase in CO 2 emission from the transport sector. Implications of this case to policy scoping of immediate and long-term state responses for carbon emission mitigation in transportation sector are discussed.
The hyper mobility of capital and the associated growth of international investment in real estate which occurred across the world in the late twentieth century, led to bursts of property development and market booms. This article examines how this global trend interfaced with local processes in the setting of a secondary metropolis of a developing country, in Metro Cebu, Philippines, and resulted in a property-led development dominated by production of high-end residential real estate commodities, the rise of a speculative land market, and a highly regressive spatial allocation. It is argued that this regressive outcome was mediated by a weak state, controlled and dominated by predatory and rent-seeking bosses who, in Cebu in particular, are not simply representatives of the local oligarchy but are big real estate developers and brokers themselves. During the boom period, neither the middle classes, whose members were also attracted to speculative property buying, nor the low-income and urban poor groups, who were largely hoodwinked by official rhetoric of social housing reform and by token participation, provided any significant social force to constrain the opportunism and rent-seeking of these bosses or to challenge the pro-growth governing agenda.
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