Population Change and Growth of Bangkok Chatchai PONGPRAY00N*
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Population Change and Growth of Bangkok Chatchai PONGPRAY00N* The final report of the consultant team is known I. Justification as Greater Bangkok Plan 2533. "Greater Bang- kok" as conceived by the American planners Thailand, one of the dynamic, developing coun- should be borne out of Bangkok and Thon Buri tries on mainland South-east Asia, has recently because both cities would constitute a single, overleaped in its economic development and large metropolitan area of Thailand. For the sake social change. The burgeoning expansion of the of planning and administration, one contiguous country's economy has evidently stamped an spatial area could be more efficiently handled than impact on its population growth and en- the fragmented one because both cities faced sim- vironmental degradation and hosts of other unex- ilar problems, especially the rapid growth of pop- pected side-effects. Due to the rise of the stand- ulation from in-migration and the deterioration ard of living, improving health-care and other of the natural environment. amenities, the population has steadily increased The importance of Bangkok has been recog- and the average life expectancy of the Thai people nized in the text-book named Five Faces of Thai- extends beyond sixty. Moreover, the basic struc- land. An Economic Geography. Professor Wolf ture of the population has gradually altered from Donner (1978), the author of the book, regarded a predominantly agrarian society to the urban- Bangkok as a region equally significant as the oriented one. This is mainly due to its alteration North, the Northeast, the Central and the South of the economic structure. From agricultural, of Thailand. Even though Bangkok contained sedentary society, the Thai people gradually begin less than 1 percent of the land and 10 percent of to move out of their birth-place in order to adjust the population of the country, it contained more to the new life. Consequently, the migratory than 56 percent of the nation's urban residents in process has been triggered after 1950 and con- the early 1970s. Besides, according to Romm's tinued up to the present time. Almost every report (1972), metropolitan Bangkok is one of provincial administrative center has naturally the most dominant primate cities in the world. It become a centrifugal force to attract the rural had overwhelmingly more than its share of all migrants. Particularly, Bangkok the capital city facilities, infrastructures, motor vehicles registra- of the country outpaced other urban areas be- tion, business taxes, commercial bank deposits cause of its comparative advantages. Right at the and construction investment. beginning of the migration process, Bangkok has The rapid population growth and areal expan- steadily attracted more migrants than any of its sion of metropolitan Bangkok is often cited as an rivals, resulting in a primacy status in every example of excess growth beyond control in de- aspect, such as population, economic status as veloping countries. Such kind of desperate devel- well as environmental problems. opment is counted as one of the most critical The notorious primacy of Bangkok, for one factors that have accelerated the local en- reason or another, has undoubtedly called atten- vironmental change. Bangkok is a case in point. tion among academics and field researchers to Through its 2W year long history of development, investigate the problems closely. Early in the only the last 50 years are more significant to an 1950s, Bangkok and Thon Buri were systemati- understanding of its urbanization and relations cally studied for the purpose of future planning with its surrounding hinterland. This researcher by the American planning teams (Litchfield, Whi- has intently followed the predecessors to look into ting, Bowne and Associates, 1960). The burgeon- the population change and its impact on the en- ing growth of Bangkok-Thon Buri at that time vironmental problems of the Bangkok metropolis was perceived as a threat to the country's well- in the 1990s. being unless some drastic measures were adopted. * Professor of Geography, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. -1- Regional Views No. 9 1996 dents in Bangkok (Sternstein, 1982). There were II. Historical Background of Bangkok about 300,000 residents within the urbanized area of Bangkok at the turn of this century. The The development of metropolitan Bangkok is clearer record of population and areal extent of one manifestation of population growth and en- the capital city appeared after that. The registra- vironmental disruption in Thailand. When King tions by various government agencies had coun- Rama I founded the city as the capital of Siam in ted the population of administrative areas, prior 1782, it held an inconsiderable number of approx- to the first modern decennial census conducted by imately 50,000 souls. On the bend of the Chao the National Statistical Office in 1960. The popu- Phraya River, the city originally functioned as a lation of the city reached one million in the 1950s defense as well as the home of the royal family with an area about 96 square kilometers (Litch- and the seat of religious authority. After digging field, Whiting, Bowne and Associates, 1960). By a canal on the eastern side, the site of the city that time, the city of Thon Buri contained more became an island surrounded by flat, swampy than 200,000 inhabitants. None of the other landscape. From the curve of the river, the city's provincial cities had reached comparable size or area has expanded slowly across the flat plain importance. If Chiang Mai was considered as the during the reign of King Rama II and Rama III. second-most populous center, it was much smaller Prior to the nineteenth century, the city grew very than Thon Buri and thus made the primacy of slowly. It gathered momentum at the turn of the Bangkok even magnified as the most notorious twentieth century and has soared since then. As case in the world (Sternstein, 1982). governmental functions increased, its areal ex- The growth of modern Bangkok has indicated pansion became also a necessity when a series of that the suburban character is the essence of the successive canals were dug outward from the contemporary capital city. Since 1937, when the original core while on the west bank, Thon Buri, municipality of Bangkok was first established, it a former capital, was also growing slowly and has expanded the municipal boundaries and ad- became an independent city. Eventually, a den- justed its administrative units more than 6 times. sely populated commercial district grew up adja- Consequently, from the urbanized area of 43.1 cent to the zone of administrative center. Bang- square kilometers with total population of kok had become the only gateway to the outside 890,453 in 1937 , the city has expanded its area to world when it first contacted with Chinese mer- 1,568 square kilometers with a population of chants and western traders in the early nineteenth 5,832,843 in 1993 (Table 1). century. During the reign of King Rama V ( 1868- According to Sternstein's estimation, the rate 1910), Bangkok was hastily westerntzed especial- of population growth in Bangkok had been the ly in the area of administrative functions as well same as that of the country before the nineteenth as physical growth and planning. Practically, it century. It began to outpace the country after paved the way for the ensuing modernization. that mainly due to the in-migration (Sternstein, However, before 1900 Bangkok had no official 1982). The accelerated increase of population record of population nor statistics of its ateal was manifested in the quickening physical expan- growth. The population and area of the city was sion of the capital. From the original site of a estimated by eyewitnesses of foreign dignitaries, little more than a fortress, the city's area ex- adventurers, missionaries and some foreign resi- panded to 43.1 square kilometers in 1937 but it Table 1. Areal Expansion and Population Growth of Bangkok Year Area(km2) Population Density (person/k-') 1937 43.1 890,453 20,660 1953 66。 7 1,171,654 17,566 1958 96.3 1,622,461 16,848 1960 173 1,703,346 9,845 1970 290 2,495,312 3,961 1980 1,568.73 5,153,402 3,221 1990 1,568。 73 5,546,937 3,536 1993 1,568。 73 5,832,843 3,718 Sources: Goldstein ( 1972) and National Census Reports. 一- 2 -一 Population Change and Growth of Bangkok (Chatchai) took almost 150 years to do that. ulation change and e,vironmental disruption However, due to the natural increase of popula- during the past decades therefore renected the tion as a consequence of rapidly declining mortal- government responses to the increasing popula― ity coupled with more or less sustained high fertil- tion densities and expectations as well as IIligrato¨ ity, the population of the capital increased at ry movement and natural inCreaSes within partic‐ roughly twice the already remarkably rapid rate ular areas. Details of adnlinistrative units and of population growth of the country. In Thai- municipal syste=is of Thailand will be described land, Bangkok was the first city equipped with in the following section. good medical service and health care. For exam- ple, chemotherapy came first to Bangkok in the IIIo AdⅡlinistrative and Municipal System late 1930s. After the Second World War, Thailand adopt- ln「Fhailand an urban place is closely associated ed pronatalism as a national population policy. A with the adnlinistrative systenl of the countryo ln large family with numerous offspring was highly order to understand one systerlll,one must know praised. Consequently, in the early 1950s, the the other system as wello For the purpose of population of the capital city reached one million analyzing the data and direrentiating urban and for the first time in its history followed by the rural areas, the adlninistrative division of the decades of tremendous population increase in the country should be clarined。 1960s and 1970s.