However, in May 1997, just weeks
before the financial crisis erupted, the government approved the
much criticized Old Town conservation plan.9 Its first outcome was
the restoration of a ruined eighteenth-century fort on the river bank
and the landscaping of the surrounding area, a project which
imposed the state idea of heritage as monumental in character and
celebrative in intent onto Bangkok’s living urban environment,
paying little attention to the social memories of its inhabitants.
Concurrent initiatives endeavoured, however, to assert a different
idea of heritage as detailed in the next section.