Tha Tian, Bangkok's Oldest Quarter, Has Fought Demolition for 15 Years. When seen from the banks of the Chao Paraya River adjacent to the large Royal Palace and the splendid temple of Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, Tha Tian, the oldest quarter of Bangkok, is an unwelcome eyesore. The government wants to demolish Tha Tian to make room for a museum and park. Tha Tian's 3000 inhabitants have opposed this plan for 15 years - in exemplary fashion, according to international urban...
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Tha Tian, Bangkok's Oldest Quarter, Has Fought Demolition for 15 Years. When seen from the banks of the Chao Paraya River adjacent to the large Royal Palace and the splendid temple of Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, Tha Tian, the oldest quarter of Bangkok, is an unwelcome eyesore. The government wants to demolish Tha Tian to make room for a museum and park. Tha Tian's 3000 inhabitants have opposed this plan for 15 years - in exemplary fashion, according to international urban planners. The topic is an awkward one for the government of Thailand, which has wanted to relocate Tha Tian's 3000 residents for 15 years but has been unable to do so. It is also awkward for Bangkok's city officials, who have had no response to their counter-proposal. And it is precarious for the residents, who are gaining self-confidence through resistance but are also sitting on a powder keg because they do not know whether and when the power shovels will arrive. Yet the government had engineered everything in logical fashion. First it built Bangkok up into a metropolis in the 1970s, with high-rise buildings, shopping malls, expressways and skytrains, until it came upon the original Bangkok of temples and royal palaces. This part of the city, the most attractive to tourists, is now to be restored as the Venice of the East, with an unobstructed view of the magnificent structures from the river. But Tha Tian is a nuisance standing in the way: its 490 row houses, a market hall for small-scale merchants, and reloading points for wholesalers obstruct the view. This obstruction, barely one kilometer long and 150 metres wide, is shabby-looking when seen from the Chao Paraya River. Accustomed to the radical plans of the preceding decades, the government demanded that the city demolish it and resettle its residents. Planners envisioned it this way in 1994 but they failed to reckon with the ambitious merchants of Tha Tian.
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