An introduction

Welcome to this new blog, in which I will be documenting how the urban poor, in various Asian cities, are turning to collective action to resolve their housing problems and more. While my original interest was sparked by the Baan Mankong slum upgrading process being carried out in Thailand, there are many other examples of participatory approaches to community development in this part of the world, and I hope to share with you what these communities are doing, how and why.

Thailand is currently facing a political crisis which very recently erupted into a week of violence, and these political tensions have at their root the long-time disparities between rich and poor, urban and rural. To me, grassroots projects are one way of helping to overcome these disparities, and if they are done with the support of the state, then, even better (in most cases). I believe that participatory projects, even if they deal solely with housing, can spark off a belief in the participants in their ability to resolve other problems they may face, leading to a push for further community development through participatory processes. This is happening right now in various communities in Thailand. The ability to help themselves leads to a change in the relationship between the poor and the state, and can diminish their marginalisation by society. Grassroots, bottom up development, gives people an opportunity to change their status from being dependent on the government for solving their problems and meeting their needs, to becoming collaborators, able to work with the government to resolve the problem, if not quite as partners (yet), then as stakeholders with an active say and input into the process and outcomes. I'll be providing some examples of this as I go along.

To provide you with a little background on myself, I have studied the Baan Mankong project in Bangkok in a fair amount of depth, as it was the focus of my PhD. My research was a qualitative study of the Baan Mankong slum upgrading process: how it affected the communities which took part, the role of slum networks in promoting connections between the poor and the state, and how relationships between the urban poor and government officials have changed as a result. In this blog I'll offer some insights from my research, whilst also documenting housing and community development projects elsewhere.