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San Tharana Park demonstrates how participation can turn unused, overgrown land into public space for the community and surrounding residents. Cooperation spans the landowner, communities, and stakeholders from policy level to individuals: government, businesses, educational institutions, professionals, and civil society. The privately owned site was made available to the BMA for public use for ten years, showing how private-sector cooperation and commitment can create urban green public space. we!park joined the network to activate San Tharana Park and demonstrate how unused land could benefit the community socially, economically, and through health and the environment, before becoming green public space for continued community use. Activities included: Weaving the neighbourhood: connecting the whole district on foot. Activities linked places in Khlong San through visitor destinations and green spaces, including City Walk and Green Finder. Carrying on memories: sharing the past through older generations. Old photographs told the neighbourhood's culture and memories, passing on stories through the neighbourhood photo activity. Weaving relationships: bringing people together to build the neighbourhood. People met and shared experiences across neighbourhood boundaries. Activities built friendships, including turning abandoned land into a pop-up park and playing in the Young Thon Cup football tournament. Creating together: bringing smiles from people to place. Social activities attracted people, brought laughter, and invited participation in changing the space, with live bands, the Khang Se long-drum club, and films in the park. Weaving dialogue: carrying the neighbourhood's dreams into the future. Discussions developed community hopes and participatory processes for the neighbourhood's future, including forums on future public space and Khlong San food culture, carrying familiar flavours forward.
Total area within a 400 m radius 585,776 sq m. Before development, the area already accessible was 570,133 sq m
Following the park activities, part of the site has remained open while awaiting development.
Unused private land had become a dumping ground. The site is beside the Chao Phraya River, surrounded by old Kadeejeen–Khlong San communities and ageing historic buildings.
This green space had been abandoned and left without maintenance. Although residents could walk to other green public spaces, its location in a historic community and private ownership make it a potential model for a new form of public green-space development, bringing every sector together with the community's history.
Local green public space data screened from Bangkok's green space database and monitoring and evaluation system, revised 23 January 2021.
This densely populated old-town community has many long-term residents approaching older age. Their memories, stories, and local history can be passed on through the site's development.
Population estimated from the Department of Provincial Administration's age-banded population statistics, 2019, apportioned by sub-district area.
The process of developing this green public space has three phases. Phase 1: prepare and build networks and cooperation among stakeholders, so everyone understands the process, policies, and future development. Small discussion groups brought together the landowner and neighbouring properties, the community and neighbourhood, partner networks and organisations responsible for community care and development, and policy-planning agencies. Their ideas, perspectives, and needs informed activities that created room to exchange, combine, and develop ideas across all sectors. Phase 2: create spaces and activating activities. Needs identified in discussions, community field surveys, and academic research on local history and green-space networks informed activities and physical design on site. A common space brought people together to talk, share opinions, learn, and develop new perspectives during events. It also let people experience the site, test parts of it, and see physical possibilities that could be communicated more widely. Phase 3: build towards future policy action. Findings from activities, public forums, discussions, community surveys, and academic research are brought together as lessons to present at public-space policy meetings.