Thailand, the country with the water, going back to the history of Thai culture, people live with the water or we can say “embracing with water”, everybody would like to build their own properties on the river banks not only because of the passive cooling that can turn the temperature of the house become cooler but also economic issue that the market transactions are happened around this particular area. There are full of typical Thai architecture such as raft houses, which could be adapted for practical use in city planning for communities along river banks. Most citizens take a benefit from river as the marketing channel to sell their products along the river which have the interaction between the habitat and the merchant created “Community” in each node of the city. If we zoom out to see macro-economic of Thailand, the main economy that driven Thailand for so long is “Agricultural”. Rice becomes the primary exporting products to overseas and Thailand is the number one country of world that export rice with much amount of quantities plus quality because of the soil and the weather and the water that make the farmer can crop the quality rice as we can see that Thailand economy and Thai society are always relevance with the water.

Unfortunately, surrounding with the water is not totally gain benefits as we wish, there are some critical issues that need to be concerned which of course something that we cannot control “the natural phenomena” which is “Rain” which can create the flooding issue. Let’s me identify the term of “Rain” in our Thailand context, rain can be both good and bad. Rain can become valuable asset to the citizen and farmer for growing their crops but when rain is more exceed and without decent management, it will turn to be flooding problem which can destroy the crops and cause many social problem issues to the city. If we have clear visionary about the term “Rain” and clearly understand the behavior of it that can has advantage and disadvantage in itself, why don’t we create the “Water System” to control the water from rain.

The next question might be “Why water need to be systemized?”

Before I answer this question, I would like to introduce the term of “Imbalancing” in Thai context first because Thailand is a country at risk of water disaster both draught and flood. Considering its size, the country has a great length of rivers in its water network, specially the central delta. Together with monsoon behavior around the region, Thailand has always been worried about the water flooding that always comes with monsoon but delirious sprawl of cities and irresponsible agriculture lands trigger huge imbalance of water flow, they get insufficient to use water during dry season and larger scale flood during rainy season.

The 2011 monsoon season hit Thailand with flooding that cost 815 lives and affected millions of others. World Bank estimates put the damage to the Thai economy at nearly US$50 billion, largely due to the impact upon industry. Factories and plants in seven industrial estates in Thailand’s central plains were evacuated due to the deluge, with automotive and HDD industries among those worst hit. Given that the 2011 floods effectively stalled what had been the extremely rapid growth of the Thai economy, it’s not surprising that the Thai government was quick to announce $11 billion of flood-defense spending including approximately a half billion for quick-fix measures at industrial centers. This has got a lot of people rethinking about our relationship with nature, and how at the present rate of economic and industrial development we are moving at a speed beyond the limits of our natural environment.

                                                                            Resource : http://www.travel.cnn.com

According to the unstable delta condition as flooding situation in Thailand, it is caused by changing environment, we have many problems those occur in this case such as in term of lacking of the food and energy, transportation, supplement, the existing networks are disconnected, changing of life process, so all of them are directly effect to our life.

The question that arises is whether it is possible for us to relearn to live with water as we have done so in the past. We have to change the way we live with water and also we need new tools that are more human related. “The people’s tools” the tools that make us more responsible and enable us to live with water in the new way all together.

“Dams won’t work. They are managed by politics.”

“Wake up Architects” We should take part in this!!

This propaganda should be popped up into Thai architect thought but honestly as an architect, I never have an interest in flooding issue in Thailand before, but after 2011 Bangkok flooding which have the big impact to me and my family and also have the effect to all citizens in Bangkok. From this reason, it reflected my thought to really concern to solve this issue and how to deal with this issue as an architect. Of course I’m not politician that have enough power to control everything as I could wish but as architect, we can propose the alternative solution how to deal with the water issue and how to turn water become more valuable in a creative way.

As I’ve investigated the physical land layers of Bangkok, we might say that Bangkok is rapidly sinking as it is eroded each year by floods of seawater that invade the city. A UN study claims that most of the city will become marshes by 2050. The city was built on marshy land 300 years ago, but the grounds are rapidly deteriorating.  But in term of economy issue, I can see the skyrocketing population and development of the city has caused the underground aquifers to become over exhausted, making them unable to handle the flood waters. The city is surrounded by polluted water fields and the water fields are bought by developers who in turn continue to build upon them, which has only worsened the city’s sinking state.

The flooding will cause problem if it has the effect to the living of people which mean that if the flood happens to any territory which there are no citizen living, we might call “Wetland”. No one will get the effect from the flood. As everybody knows that the plateau of Bangkok level is located in lower level and it’s very risky to get flood then in 2011 it is the big disaster of Thailand in the last hundred years. So let’s go to the question “Why we have to choose Bangkok as the capital city as Central Business District and what issue that we have to concern to select the city to live in?” If we’ve already known that this plateau will have most possibly to get flood in the future and Why we choose this territory?’ Is there any hidden agenda or economic issue behind there?

So I started analyzing Thai economy through the lens of architect practiced, it seems to me like the goal of modern development has created a clear separation between agricultural and industrial activities, between human and nature, between fluid and solid territories  which become a threat to human living. As we move forwards and slowly detach from nature, we neglect the power of it and forget how we once live with it. Bangkok is the city which illustrates such on-going situation clearly, from the day when water was city’s breath to the day when water become city’s catastrophe to local economy, society and environment.

The evolution of the city cause Bangkok to developed in the wrong direction. The influence of green revolution in 1967 which allow farmer to use irrigation instead of natural water source and economic development direction caused the development that set Bangkok’s fluid and solid territories apart.  For my point of view, the main idea is to look at nature not just a resource but a natural capital that needs to be maintained as much as physical or human capital. In the context of Bangkok, we need to look at the abundance of water not a threat but an economic opportunity. In planning for the prospect Bangkok we should try to understand the formation of crisis, in order to determine the new balance between water, Bangkok living and Chao Phraya river basin. People should learn to live and adapt with the water. The benefits of the water cause people to change the way they live including their economic and cultural activities to connect with the water.

Because now it’s too late to remove all Bangkok citizens to live in other place what we can do now is we should “think globally and act locally” and also use the economic as the fundamental to develop the project. In Thai tradition, there are many creative solutions how to deal with water in ancient times, they create the channel of water to make water go quickly to prevent flooding and use roots of the trees to absorb and slow the velocity of the water. What we can do furthermore is we can combine the technology and all the data to create a network. Then we have to investigate and study the formation of the Chaophraya flood plain territory and the recent crisis in order to determine a new balance between water, Bangkok city and economic corridor of lower Chaophraya River floodplain for the next 50 years.

As I’ve mentioned before in the beginning paragraph, Thailand is a country at risk of water disaster both draught and flood. What about we propose the concept of a “water detention network” that would retain water during the rainy season for use in agriculture for the rest of the year? This would require the abandonment of the current mode of rice cultivation in which the growing season overlaps the coming of the rain. The idea for “double-cropped” fields that would leave lands available for water retention in designated reservoirs.  Becoming “Floating agriculture” would ensure that these fields and reservoirs are productive all year. All agricultural area is the main key to the effective water management for Thailand and Chao Phraya river basin. Through extending the potential of flood plain characteristic and the existing irrigation system which covers 70% of area, the elements are transformed into the “water detention network system”. The scheme will blur the distinction between the industrial and the agricultural and to a point, the urban and the rural, envisaging as it does a patchwork of rice fields, water storage infrastructure and settlements. We create the network of water detention within their existing agricultural land and focusing on how Thai people lived with water in the past, and offering glimpses into creative ways to live with water and avoid getting soaked  in the future.

As we propose the new idea of “water system”, which can turn out to be effective strategic but there is one critical issue that need to work parallel together which is also the main cause of flooding issue “Deforestation”. The question of how much impact that deforestation has on flooding has been debated in many Thai environmental research issues.  Analyzing something as large and complex as the ecological system presents challenges in isolating the causes and effects. This has led some people to believe that quantitative measurements on flooding and deforestation are too difficult to prove. Forests are a natural mechanism for controlling and regulating the flow of water as it passes through the hydrological cycle.  Unfortunately, Thailand is known for having one of the largest rate of deforestation in the world.  In the past 50 years, what was once a largely forested region has been decimated, mainly for logging and agricultural purposes.  More recently however, industrialization and urban development are the main sources of forest removal, and even protected areas are now under threat.

My question “Is it possible to transform construction from being a destructive force into something beneficial to the eco-system?”  Based on this, we would like to propose a new kind of urbanism, a vision that can accept the realities of land development, but to incorporate it with forest replanting and biodiversity preservation. For us, this is our vision of sustainable development. We call this approach “Forest Urbanism”. My vision is to propose the idea of the future living for unstable delta by using the ecology system by studying the behavior of mangroves system in term of life process how they adapt to live with changing of environment surrounding in two conditions as water comes up and down in term of physical as structure. The vegetation basis is a forest of indigenous mangroves, which the government is already trying to implement in Bangkok. The mangroves naturally filter water, and they also supply fresh oxygen and natural cooling.

So, our community  would be adapted and support the unstable delta as changing environment by using the natural ecology system, the architecture can adjust to the proper activities and function follow the changing environment and provided infrastructure , urban facilities, energy management, pattern organization and living space to encourage the life process in unstable delta. In the future, Bangkok city will become a self-sustaining “floating city” that can thrive with the flow of rising tides to allow Bangkok to live with natural flooding instead of resisting it while reproducing the clean waters that detoxifies the region’s polluted waters.

In the conclusion, I hope Thai Government should take more action to really solve the water problem issue. My proposal is just a one alternative example how to embrace with the water. Water will turn to be the huge benefit for us, we don’t have to worry about water in monsoon season and less worry about water scarcity in summer anymore. After we can solve the problem then Thai Economy will go further more and more from this point. We need collaboration between government, city planner and water management council, architect and also economist to work together closely, not as before that each part just worked and tried to solve the problem only their own parts which didn’t join venture together with other departments then it became solve problem in wrong direction which waste plenty of money and time. We must have a clear objective and vision how to solve the problem together. Finally I hope Thailand will be the best example of water issue problem for Southeast Asia. Even if none of what I have proposed ever gets built, it should at least allow for whatever make-do solutions according to available budgets. It would be even better if this knowledge could be passed on to the government body or those with the power to deal with the nation’s water management system so that next time a flood comes, we are ready and better able to handle it.

The population of the city is ever growing and the number of people migrating into cities from villages in search of work is increasing day by day. We can’t tell people to stop migrating. Can we? Mumbai attracts immigrants from rural areas seeking employment and a better life. Despite government attempts to discourage the influx of people, the city’s population grew at an annual rate of more than four percent a year. Many newcomers end up in abject poverty, often living in slums or sleeping in the streets. Nor can we stop development, that’s what characterises us as humans. In the list of the top ten urban sprawls since 1990, Mumbai has been on NO 5 and will be on NO 3 in the next 13 years. The projections made in the UN’s recent publication of State of the world cities 2012-2013 state that Delhi’s urban agglomeration will have a population of 28.6 million by 2025, still well behind Tokyo’s 37.1 million. Mumbai meanwhile reached a population of 25.8 million. There’s a 29% jump in the population by 2025.  However, sheer numbers of people and rapid population growth have contributed to some serious social and environmental problems. An estimated 42 percent of the city’s inhabitants live in slum conditions. Some areas of Mumbai city have population densities of around 46,000 per square kilometre—among the highest in the world. The fact that two of our cities are going to be in the top list of urban sprawls is not something to celebrate upon. Quite apart from the question of what kind of pressure it will put on the city amenities, it highlights a serious problem.  It’s neither desirable nor a sustainable way of development.

Mumbai’s response to this fast urbanization is deplorable; squalor, slums, traffic congestion, floods, crime, pollution, deficient infrastructure, shortage of water and power issues are haunting Mumbai. Moreover, environmental infrastructure of cities, including solid waste disposal system, drainage and sewerage is not keeping up with the fast urbanization and posing serious environmental hazards. As a result, a haphazard development is taking place which is even more life threatening. For example a study said that breathing Mumbai’s air is like inhaling 20 cigarettes a day. The region is lagging behind in reaping full economic benefits of urbanization. These problems need to be solved to make the city serve as the engine of growth of national economy.

The primary attributes of environment that are affected by the urban sprawl are air, water, land and energy. Due to this excess development or what we may call as urban sprawl several changes have taken place in the climate and even a small change in the climate almost leads to a catastrophe .Here I would like to mention about the drawbacks in the drainage system and the floods that take place in Mumbai almost every year. About 100 years ago, if Mumbai city were to receive a rainfall, as heavy as the one witnessed in the monsoon of 2005, its outcome would not have been as catastrophic. This is because the population of the city has grown to ten times of what it was a century ago. To accommodate this population, the city has risen vertically, open spaces have shrunken, the arterial roads cannot be widened any further and the drainage systems fails to keep pace with the ever-increasing requirements of the metropolis.  One more factor adding to all of this are the faulty zoning regulations, when the colonies start building beyond the boundary of the city to sprawl over the neighbouring areas it does not fall under any particular zoning regulation due to which the rules in those outskirt areas vary which leads to housing everywhere, even on wetlands and where construction is not supposed to take place, therefore leading to a lot of change in the microclimate. Although global climate change has been observed almost since the 1970’s, their unpleasant effects were not alarming enough for the governments and planning authorities of cities around the world, to sit and take notice of. Thus, Mumbai’s authorities were never prompted to draft new planning policies, considering the new climatic pattern. This has been true in the case of the city authorities of Mumbai. Prior to 26^th July 2005, the city’s existing zoning and building regulations, that were drafted almost three decades ago, were used to scrutinize and regulate the new developments. There regulations failed to consider the factor of the rapidly changing local climate. Mumbai, which is known to receive an annual rainfall of around 240mm, restricted only to the months of June-September, now bears a downpour of almost eight times the average expected rainfall, in addition to the untimely winter showers. However, none of these have been considered to draft new planning policies for the city that can prevent the inundation caused by these rains and the rising sea levels. Most of the new developments permit the construction of basements, underground pedestrian bypasses and habitable space at ground level. Also, numerous old and abandoned buildings are being revitalized and remodelled to be used for a different purpose. However, the change of use of buildings from “ordinary to critical functions is carried out without strengthening the building” and without considering the climatic changes in the region. In the event of the floods, these areas get water –logged, causing destruction of life and property at large. These woes are added to by an antiquated drainage system that has been serving the city since the past century. Moreover, there has also been a blatant ignorance on the government’s and planning authority’s part to promote sustainable building construction.

The storm water drainage system of Mumbai was built largely in the days of the British rule in 1860, when the population of Mumbai was one-tenth of what it is at present. After the initial development, improving the drainage has never been a priority for the government. The system comprises of about 400km of underground drains and laterals, built on the basis of population and weather conditions of the times it was constructed in. This antiquated storm water drainage system is capable of handling rain intensity of 25mm per hour at low tide. If the rain intensity exceeds 25mm per hour and a high tide occurs, there is always a possibility of inundation. The city’s existing drainage system is designed to tackle a rainfall of normal intensity, with that assumption that there are no significant solid deposits in the drains. But the fact is otherwise, most of the city drains have been found to be occupied by a substantial amount of garbage. The resulting decrease in the capacity of the city’s storm water drainage system has been proved by the disastrous effects of the inundation that hit the city of Mumbai on 26^th july 2005. The city was caught unawares and unprepared to deal with the crisis that followed the floods. It was not in the capacity of the city’s drains to let out the excess water.

This Megacity definitely needs a climate change action plan. Mumbai is most vulnerable to climate change in the world due to its population growing in an unsustainable urban development pattern. In Mumbai, low-income groups are incapable of affording high land prices and thus end up living in slums and informal settlements. Around 74% of the total population in greater Mumbai lives in poor housing conditions, which are more vulnerable to floods and health hazards. The city due to this is constantly under the threat of floods as a result of the low lying areas and drainage system. The city due to this is constantly under the threat of floods as a result of the low lying areas and drainage system. In the city a report identified 111 places as flood prone areas. Projections have shown that the city may face water shortages by 2050.

Uncontrolled urban sprawl together with poor sanitation and drainage services seem to be the main cause for the disruption of urban watersheds. Sprawl is not an inevitable consequence of economic growth but rather a result of specific government policies that allow and in some case promote unsustainable development. Mumbai’s population growth is viewed as the root cause of land reclamation along the Mithi River and subsequent expansion of slums, residential complexes and industrial units. A lack of “systematic regional land use planning “ coupled with “ the fragmented local government structure within each metropolitan area” has fuelled suburban sprawl on the periphery of the Indian cities. Consider for example, Dharavi, a 175-hectare tract housing 800,000 people. Until the late 19th century, Dharavi was a swamp. Poor migrants moved in from different parts of India and made the land habitable. It was through their resourcefulness that Dharavi developed a flourishing economy. Today, the clichéd description of Dharavi as “Asia’s largest slum” depicts it as a place of misery and oppression. But on the positive side observe the drive, the enterprise, the spirit of survival amid the incredibly wretched physical conditions, and you cannot fail to be uplifted. Rarely do you see idleness and despair associated with this “slum”. From the establishments manufacturing leather goods for exports and selling knock-offs of designer brands on the main street to artisanal establishments in the congested inner lanes, the picture is one of pulsating energy. Dharavi is an economic success story that owes nothing to any government subsidy or urban planning. What you see here is pure Mumbai, a tribute to its spirit of human survival, ingenuity and collective solidarity. It’s an unintended city within the city.

Most of the development that you see today has been built upon a landscape of overflows. Even the city’s railway lines and national highway have been built upon what was originally a series of wetlands that served as catchment and drainage for monsoon rains. Mumbai’s Mithi River, once a web of creeks that drained excess monsoon water out into Arabian Sea, has shrunk severely as the city has grown. Uncleared rubbish also clogs storm water drains. As a coastal city we should have been in top gear right now, and since this happens every year we should have been ready for this, to adapt to climate impacts. Instead we see planners filling wetlands, planning construction on low lying salt pan lands and otherwise adding to Mumbai’s heat sink effect by removing 10,000 tress.

Image reference -

New Bombay- http://www.worldpropertyjournal.com/asia-pacific-residential-news/mumbai-real-estate-report-india-housing-market-housing-development-and-infrastructure-ltd-hdil-jp-morgan-real-estate-mumbai-real-estate-listings-5670.php

Old Bombay-http://www.airc-deefholts2011.com/Bombay-Old-Photos.html