The Architecture of the Metacity: Land Use Change, Patch Dynamics and Urban Form in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Abstract

This essay analyzes the spatial and temporal dynamics which have emerged from the rapid development of Chiang Mai, Thailand over the last four decades. Modern urbanization since the 1980s in the previously remote Chiang Mai-Lamphun Valley has coincided with digital and financial globalization, neo-liberal governance, and the articulation of a new geological era of the Anthropocene based on evidence of human induced climate change. This time frame serves as a lens to theorize the architecture of the “metacity”, a new urban form and new form of urban practice responding to the demands of global digital financial networks and neo-liberal trade policies, but grounded in the ecology and life worlds of particular localities. The metacity appears in Chiang Mai within the interstices of a particularly fragmented rural/urban mix within a self-organized rather than plan-controlled built environment. The entire valley has been the site of intensive inhabitation for centuries, and recently urbanized, yet is spatially heterogeneous, extensive and patchy rather than ordered, bounded and uniform. The resulting landscape is marked by a disjunction between a feudal wet-rice cultivation land tenure structure overlaid with a market-based typology of urban real estate products with little enforcement of land use controls. The essay begins with theorizing the form of the metacity, continues with a description of the Chiang Mai case study, and concludes with a general assessment of the need to create a new form of metacity urban practice. A metacity design practice would re-conceptualize urban theories and forms by inking architectural and ecological thinking with inclusive social practices, enhanced by new digitally-enhanced urban imaginaries and new representational tools of mapping, modeling and design.

Satellite Images and Gaussian Parameterization for an Extensive Analysis of Urban Heat Islands in Thailand

“…The same behavior is found for CM, where the daytime direction of the SUHI footprint along the NE-SW quarters follows the layout of residential and commercial zones [40]. During the nighttime, there is a significant cooling effect of the urban core and outskirts, causing a reduction of Ar61%, a0, and a ϕ modification, as also noticeable in CM panels of Figure 5.…”

Ping River Palaeochannels: A Review of Evidence across Historical Literature, Archaeology and Geoscience

“…An estimated 241 villages are spread across the remainder of the Basin (Tongsa-ard, 1988), many of which cultivate rice and fruit. Since the mid-20 th Century, the Chiang Mai Basin has experienced significant urbanisation (McGrath et al, 2017). The Chiang Mai Basin was rich with forests until the 19 th Century (Van Beek, 1995;Promsao, 1996).…”

“…Throughout the Chiang Mai Basin, villages, temples and major roads are found upon levees parallel to rivers and major streams (Cohen & Pearson, 1998). Paddy fields, many of which converted into orchards in the 1980s (McGrath et al, 2017), were established in slackwater areas and receive irrigation from the rivers (Surarerks, 2006).…”

“…Palaeochannel planforms were further preserved by the conversion of palaeochannels into irrigation canals (Figure 3a and Figure 3b). For more than 1,000 years, Lanna communities installed communal irrigation networks, locally known as muang fai, to support large-scale wet-rice cultivation (Tongdeelert & Lohmann, 1991;Surarerks, 2006;Mungsunti, 2013;McGrath et al, 2017). In the central area of the Chiang Mai Basin, villagers had apparently utilised palaeochannel surface depressions as readily-available streamflow conduits for their muang fai system (Tongsa-ard, 1988).…”

Assessing Spatiotemporal Built-up Dynamics in Chiang Mai City, Thailand using Entropy approach

“…The primary factor of urban growth is service center for urban agglomeration, rural urban development, absorption of immigration toward the largest cities of Thailand and availability of social and public service facilities Rahmi, 2002, Srinurak andMishima, 2014). In this context, several studies have employed for modelling and monitoring of urban development under the aspects of engineering, economic and environment in Chiang Mai City (Brian McGrath et al, 2017;Sangawongse, 2006;Thitimakorn, 2013). Those studies used classi cation techniques [i.e.…”