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The official approach to urban planning in Thailand involves a centralized process that relies mainly on decisions from the national government. This approach has not been effective in a small and unique area like Wat Ket in Chiang Mai City in northern Thailand which has a variety of different land use types. Some land use areas in the Wat Ket area were designated as commercial zones, without the involvement and agreement of local residents and this led to land use conflicts and other related problems. This paper describes how stakeholders in Wat Ket applied an alternative collaborative approach to urban land use planning. The paper provides a case study of the collaborative urban planning approach in the context of a rapidly growing city in the developing world.Collaborative urban land use planning is supported by land use analysis applying aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to analyse land use changes in the study area.

Urbanization is a growing process in both developed and developing countries as the proportion of the world’s population is increasing. Land use changes are dynamic process that linked to natural and human systems especially in build-up regimes including Chiang Mai Comprehensive Plans boundary (CMCP) of northern Thailand. Consequently, the measurement of land use transitions and environmental effects are needed and the environmental quality indicator models for air and water pollutions monitoring and implementation for the CMCP boundary were developed for this study. The main objective of this study is to clarify the causal relationship between technocracy urbanization processes within CMCP boundary and their environmental consequents. Accordingly, the research methodology was developed to apply and analyze the results from spatial dynamics simulation of cellular automata models which have been effectively used to predict physical urbanization trends in correlation with environmental quality indicators development which is also hypothesized to be effective co-technique in order to understand the spatial dynamics impact from urbanized area of interested. The study result showed a tendency of CMCP urban growth to increase over time. The environmental indicators conclusive prediction trends from this study during 2000 to 2030 inform long-term deteriorate environmental qualities of air, water, and landuse changes while seasonal patterns revealed diverse characteristic for each indicator. The future aspect from this study is to enable the city’s administrators to implement the model as additional reference in decision making which are anticipated toward sustainable patterns of the CMCP environmental monitoring and enhancement strategies.

This study was conducted to 1) study and analyze causes and results of conflict solving between zinc mine project and the community in the case of cadmium-contamination in Mae Tao watershed, Mae Sod District, Tak Province over the past 10 years, 2) prove the results of conflict resolution between both parties (Project and the community) by using new evidence based concepts to minimize conflicts between zinc mine project and the local community with respect to cadmium contamination in Mae Tao watershed in the past 10 years (2004-2014); as the problems involved many aspects in terms of such as economy, society, watershed structure, distribution of mineral deposit and mining, cadmium contamination in paddy soil, cadmium contamination in rice and cadmium contamination in human health status. This upon the least case of evidence-based information study found that case 1: problem concerning cadmium contamination in paddy soil in Mae Tao watershed has not yet been dealt with and conflicts are likely to arise again in case there appears stimulus, case 2: upon the use of evidence-based information to moderate extent, problem about cadmium contamination in rice grown in Mae Tao watershed was partially resolved and case 3: by criteria of using evidence-based information to the greatest event and the past that come related issues have been solved, cadmium accumulation in urine of people residing nearby and around Mae Tao watershed was believed not to get worse to cause Itai-Itai disease. Evidence base concept apparently gives a new neutral power in analysis of conflict resolutions in three case studies. However, the degree of success in conflict management by this approach depends on the complexity of the problems in individual case. The present study provides a convincing conclusion that the more the evidence-based knowledge the greater the success in conflict resolution.

2, 10, Environment and Natural Resources Journal

This essay analyzes the spatial and temporal dynamics which have emerged from the rapid development of Chiang Mai, Thailand over the last four decades. Modern urbanization since the 1980s in the previously remote Chiang Mai-Lamphun Valley has coincided with digital and financial globalization, neo-liberal governance, and the articulation of a new geological era of the Anthropocene based on evidence of human induced climate change. This time frame serves as a lens to theorize the architecture of the “metacity”, a new urban form and new form of urban practice responding to the demands of global digital financial networks and neo-liberal trade policies, but grounded in the ecology and life worlds of particular localities. The metacity appears in Chiang Mai within the interstices of a particularly fragmented rural/urban mix within a self-organized rather than plan-controlled built environment. The entire valley has been the site of intensive inhabitation for centuries, and recently urbanized, yet is spatially heterogeneous, extensive and patchy rather than ordered, bounded and uniform. The resulting landscape is marked by a disjunction between a feudal wet-rice cultivation land tenure structure overlaid with a market-based typology of urban real estate products with little enforcement of land use controls. The essay begins with theorizing the form of the metacity, continues with a description of the Chiang Mai case study, and concludes with a general assessment of the need to create a new form of metacity urban practice. A metacity design practice would re-conceptualize urban theories and forms by inking architectural and ecological thinking with inclusive social practices, enhanced by new digitally-enhanced urban imaginaries and new representational tools of mapping, modeling and design.