ABSTRACT
Many Asian observers believe that in Thailand, which is considered a positive example of a developing country that has embraced both globalization and liberalization, there has been a decline in poverty and a decrease in inequality. While it is true that gross domestic product growth rates in Thailand increased from approximately 1.5 percent in the 1960s to approximately 3.5 percent in the 1980s and above 5 percent in the 1990s, there is little evidence of “a leveling out of living condi tions between the rich and the poor, the traditional and modern” (Lee, 2006: 310) in the city of Bangkok. In fact, like many areas of major Southeast Asian cities, Bangkok is littered with slum and squatter settlements that have grown as rapidly as the urban populations themselves. While Bangkok contains relatively few of the terribly squalid and desperate places common to cities such as Kolkota and Mumbai in India, there is still a great deal of urban poverty. The Bangkok Metropolitan Area, for example, contains close to 1.6 million people living in slums, up from 1.2 million in 1991.
