Walking in Bangkok
"He let his mind drift as he stared at the city, half slum, half paradise. How could a place be so ugly and violent, yet beautiful at the same time?"
Chris Abani
In order to understand the complex relationships between Bangkok’s slums, dreamworlds and their inhabitants, we must understand the concept of “dual compression” introduced in Tsung-yi Michelle Huang’s Walking Between Slums and Skyscrapers. “Dual compression” consists of the global and the local compression that people, places and time experience in a global city like Bangkok. On one hand, global compression is the compression of time and space by the global flows and the accumulation of capital, both aided by the improvement of technology, which accelerates production and consumption. This creates a homogenized space where physical and temporal bounds are traveled in order to produce profit. The result is several shrunken and simultaneous worlds of different commodities, such as thematic restaurants, all in the same space and time. Huang exemplifies global compression with the construction of monumental space in the form of internationally designed skyscrapers, sustained by a “collective will to achieve phenomenal economic success from its liberal economic system and global city status” (18). In Bangkok this phenomenon can be widely seen, as the construction of skyscrapers is and has been prevalent in the city over the last two decades.
On the other hand, local compression is the change in the city space caused by the global compression, when ordinary people’s living space is compressed in order to accommodate the global economy and its byproducts. Huang concretely exemplifies local compression in the city of Hong Kong with the construction of high rise public housing composed of tiny units, where over half of the population of the city is crammed. Yet, she is skeptical of any altruistic goal in providing public housing, as former residential space is seized by global compression as a land-grab for higher profitability. In the city of Bangkok local compression is manifested in a different way, mainly with the creation of informal settlements, although global compression still land-grabs former residential space in the city for higher profitability. An interesting example of local compression in the city of Bangkok is the Maeklong Railway Market, shown in the video below.
The effects that dual compression has on the city walkers are diverse, and Huang illustrates them in her book via the characters of Wong Kar-wai’s movie Chungking Express. All city walkers are inevitably impacted by global compression, as globalization is an unstoppable force that shapes the city and the mentality of its dwellers. Globalization creates an idealized dream and a false sense of opportunity and economic benefits that all city dwellers aspire to achieve, although sometimes it can raise feelings of nostalgia and alienation from the city.
Despite this, city dwellers seem to be blind to the effects that global compression has on their city and on their lives for two reasons. One is that global compression and the accumulation of capital is constantly reshaping the city by creating and improving new monumental spaces. The other is that the average city dweller belongs to the working class, the one that has suffered local compression and has therefore been excluded from the monumental space of the city. Globalization, and therefore global compression and its effects, is implied in the lives of every city dweller, although not specifically. Regular people are often excluded from the benefits of globalization, while suffering its effects (local compression) at the same time. Huang expresses this concept as a “dual vision of the city” (54), where the absence of the global space in ordinary people’s lives accentuates their reality. It is the invisibility and inaccessibility of the global space for most people that subtly suggests the boundaries between the two different worlds of local compressed slums and global dominant dreamworlds.
In Bangkok dual compression produces several impacts on the global city dwellers, as it creates two contrasted worlds that they must walk though, one with monumental and glamorous skyscrapers and one with dense, low quality public housing or even informal housing. The juxtaposition of these two radically different worlds, dreamworlds and slums, within just one city creates numerous disparities between its inhabitants. This adds to the already tumultuous political environment of the country, and creates and gives rise to several issues centered around the dispute over the right to the city. This dispute takes place between the national poor and the international elite of Bangkok. The international elite’s interests are usually backed up by the government, whose intentions are to keep developing the city in order to attract tourists and global investors. These interests often interfere with the local communities and their interests, and the result of this conflict is usually beneficial for the elites and detrimental to the locals.
Most of the time development projects involve actions intended to “beautify” the city, and include the development of parks and green zones or construction in order to make streets easier to walk. These projects usually involve multiple eviction orders for whole communities or for street vendors for the sake of building tourist attractions, as illustrated in Asia News Monitor’s “Thailand: Community residents vow to fight relocation” (2009). Evictions are usually resisted and fought by the locals, who complain that they do not receive enough notice and/or compensation. In order to develop the city according to its interests and to prepare to host an international economic summit, the government of the city of Bangkok has gone as far as “cleaning” the streets of more than 10,000 homeless people and moving them into military barracks. The government also prohibited entrance to the country to more than 500 human rights activists before the same economic summit in 2003, according to Kessler’s “Bangkok evicts the poor before economic summit”.
Despite the uneven interactions between global and local compression, and despite the struggle for the right to the city between the international elites and the local working classes, the use of public land and space has evolved over time in the city of Bangkok. As previously explained, the space in a global city like Bangkok is disputed between numerous parties such as different government agencies, elites and common people, each one with their own interests and intentions. This struggle is illustrated by Piromruen in “From ‘Homeless’ to ‘Hopeless’: Bangkok ‘Sanam Luang’ urban space dilemma” (2012). In the article, the example of Sanam Luang, or ‘Royal Grounds’, a major free urban space within the old town of Bangkok, is studied in order to understand how the population of Bangkok use that public space. The article illustrates that people’s multiple activities completely alter the physical settings of the space and shows the gradual appropriation of the land by common people for their own benefit and purposes, ignoring governmental regulations. It shows how the urban population of any socioeconomic class is able to shape and influence the shape of the urban space in Bangkok. This is exemplified by the occupation of the space at night by homeless people, regardless of the fact that the site is supposed to be closed to the public at that time precisely to prevent this from happening.
To walk then, between the slums and skyscrapers of Bangkok, is to experience the effects of global and local compression. But the outcome in the grand struggle for the right to the city is as yet undetermined. The current trajectory may not be as liberating as the Sanam Luang case suggests, instead, is one that gradually follows in line with global interests and powers, as they are becoming the dominant force that shapes the city.