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The conventional approach to urban planning in Thailand has been a centralised process that relies mainly on decisions by urban planners, based on national regulations and policies. This approach has been ineffective in Wat Ket, a small and unique area in Chiang Mai City in northern Thailand. A key problem is that some parts of Wat Ket were designated as a commercial zone, without the involvement and agreement of local residents, leading to land use conflicts and efforts by local people to challenge the zoning. Collaborative urban planning has been advocated and applied in a number of countries over at least the last two decades, but rarely, if at all, in ‘developing’ countries. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss efforts, by local stakeholders, to apply collaborative urban planning as an alternative approach to urban planning in Wat Ket. In support of the collaborative urban planning experiment, land use analysis applying aerial photography and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) was used as a method for quantifying land use changes. Findings from this study are that: (1) the experiment in collaborative urban planning led to some revisions of the land use zoning and the final draft of a specific plan in two designated areas; (2) the potential for collaborative urban planning in strengthening the participation of multiple stakeholders and contributing to knowledge in urban planning was demonstrated; (3) the willingness of the planning agencies to adopt the approach requires time and resources for any change in urban land use planning policy. It is suggested that further documented experiments in collaborative land use planning will be needed to encourage policy change.

Publisher Summary Norms are dynamic, constantly shifting, and a reflection of our individual and collective wisdom about food consumption and dietary health. This chapter attempts to synthesize extant literature on this topic and to organize it in a way that will stimulate further thinking, debate, and research. It is important to distinguish between injunctive and descriptive norms because they are conceptually distinct and have very different implications for eating behaviors. Injunctive norms involve “shoulds” or “oughts” that reflect a collective obligation to behave in a specific way. When internalized, norms reflect people's personal beliefs about what is an appropriate behavior. Injunctive norms related to eating proscribe or prescribe behaviors, such as what foods are allowed, how much food is consumed, fat content, daily caloric intake, the number of eating occasions in a day, etc. Eating norms can exist within a culture or ethnicity, religion, family, peer group, organization, or any other social group. People are informed of a group's norms through a socialization process in which learning is a function of exposure to the attitudes, opinions, values, and behaviors of other group members and also through organizations in the government, education, and business sectors. Each group has its own values and objectives, which often results in confusing and contradictory messages (e.g., government norms are represented and promoted via a healthy eating guide, whereas friends encourage high-fat and high-sugar content foods). The chapter briefly reviews the impact of culture, family, peers, government, and business on eating norms.