In the wake of the Chakri Bicentenary, land use and building
height in the Rattanakosin Island area were regulated by decree.
A government-level committee produced a master plan for the
‘preservation and development’ of a 6.2 sq. km area, termed Old
Town, at a projected cost of 1.5 billion Baht. Reactions by academics
and civic society activists to the release of the plan in 1995 were
highly critical as the plan required the demolition of some of the
more recent buildings in the area and the resettlement of street
vendors in order to benefit the historic architecture and develop
green areas in the thick inner city fabric. In 1996 the Bangkok
Metropolitan Authority drafted an alternative plan, in which not
only historic monuments and architecture but cultural practices
too were approached as heritage. The plan’s aim to revitalize the
social fabric of the capital’s historic districts was not limited to
Rattanakosin Island. In the face of a traffic and pollution alert, the
election of a new metropolitan administration in 1998 produced
yet another plan, drawn up with unesco assistance and significantly
named ‘Humanize Bangkok’, which aimed to involve local residents
in sustainable urban development. 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.