Building Social Resilience With Youth Through Urban Projects: City Of Nan, Thailand

Abstract

This paper presents a research outcome of building social resilience with youth through new urban projects of Nan historic city, North of Thailand. The research of the first year has been proceeded through deliberative public engagement with two groups of youth, local youth and architecture students. The objective of the research are, to search for potential places in the city proposed by youth as urban regeneration and conservation projects and to propose the selected project to the city of Nan with support from Chulalongkorn University (CU), under the framework of CU Community Engagement to stimulate mutual activities between university and local people for sustainable development. As one of the most popular tourist destinations, Nan is encountering rapid urban development, cultural and social changes. This research is finding solutions for the city collaborated with local youth as essential stakeholder as they are being actually touched by these rapid changes and they will unavoidably encounter these impacts in the future without any proper intervention. Deliberative public engagement has been applied as main methodology for local youth to exchange ideas, perceptions and uses of their city with architecture students in workshops, local youth as user of the city and architecture students as workshop organiser and project visualiser. Regarding three-year planned research project, the selected site agreed with the city of Nan will be developed and implemented as pilot project with collaboration of youth, broader stakeholders and architecture students for next coming years for better and more resilient society.