ABSTRACT
The typical inner-city neighbourhood of Bangkok is dense, diverse and subject to
continuous pressure for change due to traffic, freeways, modernization, com-
merce, tourism and migration.1 One of the key characteristics is instability: the
identity of the place can be defined by its slippages, by the fluidity of forms,
practices and meanings. A variety of proprietors, residents, hawkers and others
use and appropriate public space for a broad range of functions, desires and
practices. The use and meaning of public space is subject to both local and global
flows of time and space with shifting meanings of secular and sacred, private
and public, legal and illegal. This looseness is linked to a high population density
and demand for the use of space; but also to negotiable forms of governance and
urban planning. Much of urban Bangkok has a multiplicitous urban character,
held in place by the inertia of a robust urban morphology and a certain strictness
of cultural coding.
