Grounded Planning: People-Centred Strategies for City Upgrading in Thailand and the Philippines
Published by: Development Planning Unit (DPU), UCL
Year of publication: 2017
Background
The DPU/ACHR/CAN Young Professional’s Program produces a booklet on issues regarding development by each wave of interns. In 2017, two of the chapters concerned the work of Openspace in Thailand.
Grounded Planning in Thailand
The DPU's publication Grounded Planning: People-Centred Strategies for City Upgrading in Thailand and the Philippines looked at the work of Openspace around the following core issues:
Flexible financing, as a means of securing funding for community architecture and development projects, in an environment of shrinking government funds
Learning the city, as a means of creating networks and increasing the resilience of communities
In particular, the booklet explored:
how different forms of flexible financing—from government funding and working with foundations on issue-based projects, to corporate funding and even using private architecture projects to fund community ones—secure the work of community architects in Thailand
how the members of the Wat Care Nang Lerng Community changed their negotiation style in light of mounting threats of evictions and a growing uncertainty to a flexible negotiation style which included a number of artistic and social issue focused events
This booklet uses case studies from Thailand and the Philippines, and is a critical window into the changing world of development and the work of community architects in two very different settings.
