"Nice architecture, but where are the people?"

 

  Ok, I'm on my first international trip and I get it now. This place is like a time warp. If my camera and I make it back, you guys are going to see what Ohio cities used to look like, minus streetcars and plus cell phones. WELCOME TO ASIA! Sawatdee krap!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sawatdee krap!

 

 

I think I'm gonna need to brush up on my Thai...

    ^----- Sawatdee krap means "hello" in Thai.

   

    If you saw my Thailand photos in the world photos section, you know that I got a chance to travel to Chaing Mai, Thailand. I passed through Bangkok on the way, and took day trips to Chaing Dao and Doi Suthep.

 

    While I did the tourist things (elephant riding, rockclimbing, etc,) I also spent a lot of time just wandering around the city. Chiang Mai is a city of 300,000.

 

    What I saw mostly confirmed what I suspected about cities. Visiting Chiang Mai was like stepping into a time warp. Thailand has a functioning passenger rail system, a functioning inter-city bus system, and a functioning city public transportation system.

 

    On the other hand, automobile sales are growing at about 10% a year - like the United States had in 1960. You could actually see it in the number of new cars. While the urban core is still very much intact, I could see the sprawl creeping in. Chaing Mai has only a few interchanges or overpasses - similar to Ohio cities around 1940 before the Interstates came out in force. Single family homes are being built on the periphery, but at this point perhaps 10% of families live in the suburbs.

 

    There are some new skyscrapers, surrounded by parking. Many of them are outside of the urban core. Some of them are near the center. I can only imagine how much urban fabric was removed to make way for the skyscrapers.

 

    The markets were like nothing I ever saw before. I estimate that there was an average of one street vendor per 100 feet of street or better.  I ate almost exclusively from street vendors. Thai people live in the street: they cook in the street, eat in the street, work in the street, and socialize in the street. This was quite a bit of culture shock at first, but I enjoyed it. When I got home I realized how much trouble it is to drive to a grocery store. In Chiang Mai, I walked 200 feet from my room and bought a pound of fresh pineapple from a street vendor every day for lunch.

 

    Yet, the grocery stores and malls are moving in. You can tell by the new buildings. Out on the "superhighway" are the "Mega stores"

 

    There was one surprise. Despite being very dense, Chiang Mai was not all that walkable. The reason was lack of sidewalks and traffic that does not stop. Chiang Mai is a motorbike city. They park on the side of the road and walk 10 feet to their destination. All of those parked motorbikes make it difficult to walk. I noticed that most walkers were foreigners.

 

    Here on urbanohio we lament the loss of our old urban areas. Look at some of the topics: passenger rail back in the day; the death of railroad transportation; the death of Summit Street; proposal to revitalize this or that neighborhood. There is no need to revitalize anything in Chiang Mai. Practically all of the storefronts are occupied. Whenever something is torn down, something bigger is built in it's place. I did manage to find a handful of vacant buildings but there is no widespread abandonement.

 

    Yet, in Chiang Mai I could see it coming. It was a bit sad to see teenagers playing video games in the mall. A big billboard sign in the city advertises a new single family home development on the fringe. Car sales are increasing. The natives generally agree that Chaing Mai is much better than it was before. They see progress.

 

    Thailand is not rich by American standards, but it is richer than all of the countries around it. It has a steady stream of immigrants. This helps keep the core populated as richer folk move out. It also affects wage rates. I rode an intercity bus that had a crew of 3: a driver, conductor, and doorman. Ohio streetcars generally switched to one man operation by the 1930's. The intracity buses hold about 10 people and come on a frequency of more than one per minute. Compare to Ohio city buses that hold 90 and come once a hour. The ratio of operators to passengers is the difference.

 

    There are still a lot of rickshaws, or passenger tricycles, in Chiang Mai, but they are invariably driven by skinney old guys. I didn't see a single young rickshaw driver. In fact, as a general rule, the younger people were taller, heavier, and looked more healthy than the older folks. The change was fast enough to see in the faces.

 

  And, by the way, Thailand expects to extract more oil this year than they did last year.

 

    Conclusions:

 

    Chaing Mai is following the same patterns as Ohio cities. Judging from old photos and my (limited) knowledge of cities, Chiang Mai in 2007 resembles Ohio cities anywhere from 1940 to 1960. Cities are complicated beings, made up of buildings, vehicles, people, streets, utilities, and a whole host of economic activities. As much as we like to blame transportation engineers, LeCorbusier planners, Robert Moses types, etc., the patterns of industry and commerce have occured everywhere around the world. It is conceivable that in 40 years that Thailand people will be lamenting the loss of the way things used to be.

 

    Affluent people have always moved out to the periphery of Ohio cities, right from the beginning. Up until about 1950, they were replaced by 1. immigrants and 2. younger people. Now that we have very few immigrants and a low birth rate, we are still expanding geographically while the core declines. This is no one's fault in particular.

 

    "Times change, and we change with them." - William Henry Harrison

 

 

 

 

 

   

   

Affluent people have always moved out to the periphery of Ohio cities, right from the beginning.

 

In Dayton's case it was the opposite, at least until after the 1870s and even later...the poor and working class lived on the fringes, where land was cheap, and the bourgouis in the heart of the city...or there was a mix happening on the edges of town. 

 

But your larger point is correct.  In-migration has stopped, the birthrate has dropped, and Ohio citys are thinning out.

 

 

    Chaing Mai is following the same patterns as Ohio cities. Judging from old photos and my (limited) knowledge of cities, Chiang Mai in 2007 resembles Ohio cities anywhere from 1940 to 1960. Cities are complicated beings, made up of buildings, vehicles, people, streets, utilities, and a whole host of economic activities. As much as we like to blame transportation engineers, LeCorbusier planners, Robert Moses types, etc., the patterns of industry and commerce have occured everywhere around the world. It is conceivable that in 40 years that Thailand people will be lamenting the loss of the way things used to be.

 

Then there is the counterexample of Montecarlos' posts from Munich and Cologne, where one sees a first world country with high auto ownership, ZPG, but also active city centers.

 

    Here on urbanohio we lament the loss of our old urban areas. Look at some of the topics: passenger rail back in the day; the death of railroad transportation; the death of Summit Street; proposal to revitalize this or that neighborhood.

 

UrbanOhio, the website, as a giant excercise in nostalgia for urban conditions most of us never knew...I wonder about that sometimes, or I am perhaps just projecting my own attitudes onto the discourse here.