due to the way each of them was produced independently. Accordingly, land uses in peri-urban Bangkok were hardly controlled and thus led to environmental deterioration. Furthermore; in the absence of an efficient legislative framework controlling and organizing the use of lands, private sector has played a leading role in peri-urban land markets. As most of the peri-urban land belongs to private individuals and land developers, they determined the uses of land. Consequently, during the economic boom in the 1980s › mid 1990s many housing development projects and new settlements decided to take risks by developing their projects or by building houses in the areas where land prices were cheap, despite being prescribed in the master plans for agricultural purposes so that basic infrastructures were provided at lowest level. Therefore, complains of having inadequate infrastructure and social services from peri-urban households and from land developers were not only because of the inability of local governments to provide them, but also due to the poor commitment to planning principles of landowners and land developers themselves. These have caused a sprawling pattern of settlement and environmental deterioration in peri-urban Bangkok nowadays. CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS The high rate of population growth, transforming economic base to non-farming activities, and rapid expansion of built-up areas in peri-urban Bangkok indicated that it has entered ùurbanizationû stage. The provinces that tended to become highly urbanized are Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, and Samut Prakan which are those locating nearest and having good linkages with Bangkok. Resulted by the urbanizing peri-urban Bangkok, the BMR as a whole can be named to be in the stage of ùsuburbanizationû in which the growth of the region is influenced by the growth of its outer zone whereas the primary core has declined or in stagnation.
The research findings reflected the changes of settlement patterns being characterized as ùconcentrationû by increasing density in the eastern side of the Chao Phraya River in Nonthaburi, Samut Prakan and Pathum Thani province; and as ùde- concentrationû to new areas by clustering around the provincial centers, along major roads and rivers, and to predominating agricultural areas. So far, these changes have generated number of urban problems. It showed that the force of urbanization in peri-urban Bangkok greatly influenced the changes of settlement patterns and consequentially the deterioration of peri-urban environments. To tackle with these changes, recommendations are that planning organizations should formulate planning strategies to promote agglomeration of settlements and to alleviate the severity of urban problems from insufficient provision of basic services. It is suggested to improve local government staffsû coordination skills regarding urban management and administration. Moreover, each province should develop database system for urban development planning so that the decisions on the prioritization of problems, problem solving, and spatial planning strategies can be made in a more efficient way. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The article is based on a research that was financial supported by Faculty of Social Sciences, Kasetsart University. The author would like to thank GISTDA for providing satellite images. LITERATURE CITED Askew, M. 2002. Bangkok: Place, Practice and Representation. London: Routledge. Department of Local Administration. 2008. Statistics on Population and Households (online). www.dopa.go.th/xstat/popyear.html accessed on 5 March 2008. Garba, S. B. and Saad Al-Mubaiyedh. 1999. çAn Assessment Framework for Public Urban Land