Bangkok: From Primate City to Primate Megalopolis

Abstract

As late as 1960 Bangkok was far from being a megalopolis, far even from being a dynamic modern city of the sort familiar in the west. A 1959 report from an American group of consultants to the Thai Ministry of the Interior noted that

to a person accustomed to Western standards, the city is remarkable for its compactness. A vigorous walker can traverse it from north to south in three hours or less. The country, in the form of village-like settlements, can be found within many parts of the city. There is little in the way of an urban fringe, except for strings of village settlements along major canals and roads. Internal organisation generally lacks the zonal or sector character of most western cities. There is the old city area, the Chinese quarter, a western type residential area and formal political districts, but within large parts of the city thatched indigenous housing in rice paddies alternate with modern roads, western housing and shop houses, creating areas which seem neither rural nor urban. Social zones, as yet, with the exception of the Chinese Sampeng district, do not exist.¹