ABSTRACT
Landscape is at once a contentious, anxious, and opportunistic term, always contingent on the action of making and re-making. To understand the potential for local agency within Bangkok's complex territorial landscapes, one must realize its distinctive history and its increasingly urbanized reality. The periphery of Bangkok is changing fast as well, where surrounding provinces are connected by a new ring road and the expanded Skytrain and highways. Due to a historical lack of sufficient and affordable housing in Bangkok, communities have settled among the cracks in landscape. As a regional node of operation within the widely cast net of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) in South-East Asia, Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) has led the charge for grassroots agency within the Bangkok metro region. Baan Mankong aims at cultivating an urban landscape wherein people who have previously been excluded from secure housing can take over the lead in the process of their own secure housing provision.
