Content and data by we!park shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence unless noted otherwise. | Privacy Policy
Why small green public spaces? Because inner Bangkok is packed with buildings, wall to wall, with almost no room left for a big park, and the ones that exist are often a long trip away. The city's small leftover spaces, though, are everywhere: under the expressway, in front of a building, a plot waiting to be developed. These matter. Any of them can be opened up and turned into green public space, somewhere for body and mind, for resting, for people to gather, for a bit of nature, shaped around what the people and the place around it actually need, and close enough that everyone can walk there from home.
What is green public space, exactly? And where does Bangkok actually stand today, is it what we think it is? The we!park network has done the research, set out what the words mean, and dug into the data for inner Bangkok, so everyone can understand why this matters and where things really are before we push the work forward in a way that fits the truth of the city.
Green space the public can use, or that the public can enter freely, with a meaningful amount of plant cover, meant as a place for people to come together and to build a healthier, lasting environment.
The "parks" we all know are one kind of green public space, but it also covers land owned by the state, a company, a legal entity, or anyone at all who "opens" their green space for the public to use freely. That brings a double benefit to the city: socially, as public space, and environmentally, as green area that cleans the air.
These are the main yardsticks cities around the world use to size up how much green public space they have. Of course, there's still plenty of work to do on measuring the quality of a space, how easy it really is to reach, and the policy and support behind it, so that "everyone" can get to it and use it in the ways they need.
What would you like our Bangkok to be? Pick a target you'd like to see. Go with Green Bangkok 2030, the BMA's drive to turn Bangkok into a green city, which we!park is one of the partners helping move forward. Or follow the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Or match a city that's already there. Or just set it however you like.
Governments, here and in developed countries alike, can no longer fix a city's problems on their own. The problems of a modern city are too tangled for that. So many cities now treat participation as a core strategy: bringing people from every part of society into the planning, the decisions, and the work, sharing the information, the goals, and the policies, so that green public space becomes part of a city that's good to live in for everyone, and so people feel a shared sense of responsibility and ownership over it.
Beyond thinking, planning, designing, and building, we care just as much about finding ways to manage and care for a space together, so it stays in use and stays good for the long run.
Find a space together, think together, build together, invest together, care for and manage it together
Research on turning small empty plots into green public space through participation from every sector. It starts by reviewing the relevant ideas and theory, studies prototype sites in Thailand and abroad, and analyses where Bangkok's green space stands today. From there it puts participatory design to the test on four real sites, gathering data along the way to draw conclusions and shape the approach for the future. Download
A guide that gathers the stories of small green public spaces, covering both the green side and the participatory side of development, so a space becomes truly public. It walks through each step in detail, with examples of public spaces from Thailand and abroad woven in. The last part covers how to assess a space and set up a structure to keep it moving, something anyone can try out. Download
A volume on data and indicators. It pulls together the study of data relevant to developing green public space and turns it into indicators: a tool for understanding where the city's green public space stands, spotting the urgent places that need more of it, setting criteria for judging the quality of a space, and measuring the difference green public space makes at the city scale. Worked examples of analysis and assessment are included at the end. Download