The ecology of the capital: duality

The ecology of the capital: duality and continuity

From the 1890s the space of the capital increasingly assumed a dual character with the small eastern territorial core around the palace spreading over a semi-aquatic landscape dominated by waterways, villages, gardens over a and ricefields. From 1900 to 1936 the built-up area of the capital expanded from 13 to 43 square kilometres, but was unevenly populated and ecologically diverse. Visiting Bangkok in 1911, the Italian nobleman Salvatore Besso commented on the Thai capital city: "The Venice of the Far East the capital still wrapped in mystery in spite of the thousand efforts of modernism amid its maze of canals' (Cited in Sternstein 1982: 13), the dual character of the settlement geography of the capital and its surrounding mosaic of ban and bang persisted until at least a decade after the Second World War (and in Thonburi much longer), and this waterway network outside the rings of the old city canals exercised a major influence on the pattem of physical expansion thereafter

Neither King Chulalongkorn or his successors to the absolute monarchy (Rama VI and VII) translated their fascination with modernism into an overall plan for the metropolis. Nor were the municipal administrations they introduced equipped to control urban development under the impact of economic, social and population change. Until 1892 the capital was administered as a domain of central government in hybrid arrangement which was a clear legacy of traditional governance. The Ministry the Palace (Krom Wang) controlled policing and other matters in the Rattana kosin area, while the Harbour Department (Krom Tha) was responsible for sanitary arrangements and policing around Sampheng and beyond. Under the administrative reforms from 1892, a new Ministry of the Capital (Krasuang Nakhonban) was created, with divisions for police, revenue collection, sanitation, construction of roads and the control of public markets (Porphant 1994: 126-8). This development, together with the progressive definition of administrative subareas within the wide expanse of settlements ramifying from city, all reflected the increasing need to manage a more complex and growing settlement area. Municipal govern ment was essentially an arm of the central state apparatus concened with maintenance, and there was no public involvement in local government Other agencies played a greater role in the evolving spaces of the capital. In particular, the Crown Property Bureau as the greatest landowner in the capital was responsible for much new commercial development, and other key central government ministries (the ministries for war, education and public works) made decisions which directed new patterns of building