Research & Article

In 2011, Thailand, a country that had once experienced regular year floods as a matter of course, faced a natural crisis. The Great Flood quickly engulfed districts surrounding Bangkok, as well as the city itself, demonstrating a stark contrast from the times of raised houses and transportation by boat and reflecting the impact of recent urbanization. Bangkok, previously a city valued for its intricate network of waterways, had turned its back on the valuable infrastructure of canals and the water was now a menace to be battled. This paper traces the historic evolution of Bangkok’s waterways and examines the erosion of this traditional feature, which has some disastrous consequences on the function of the city. It goes on to make some policy recommendations on means of reintegrating the canal, not merely as an aesthetic expression of a long-gone tradition, but as an alternative for revitalizing the ecological and sociocultural sustainability of Bangkok today and in the future.