Chiang Mai and Khon Kaen as Growth Poles: Regional Industrial Development in Thailand and its Implications for Urban Sustainability

Abstract

This article examines the concept of urban sustainability within the context of two case studies from Thailand. The Thai state, under the auspices of its development planning agencies, identified the secondary cities of Chiang Mai and Khon Kaen as growth poles in the 1970s. As such, both cities were perceived as engines of regional development in their respective regions of North and Northeast Thailand. The authors critically examine how the strategies of decentralization of industrial growth and development of secondary urban centers, ostensibly to alleviate congestion and pollution in Bangkok, have been deployed in the context of urban primacy and uneven development in Thailand. They argue that these policies have helped induce some growth in the secondary cities in question but that in doing so, they have induced new problems of sustainability in the secondary cities and their surrounding rural areas without alleviating problems of sustainability in Bangkok.