Collaborative Urban Land Use Planning in Wat Ket, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Abstract

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.