Lost in Translation: Creative Urban Regeneration in Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract

Over the last decade, developing countries across Asia are increasingly fostering creativity-based industries to regenerate neighborhoods in their global cities. Multilateral institutions, government agencies, and academics have lauded these new urban redevelopments as successfully supporting local creative industries and communities. With its development models originating from the Global North, does creative regeneration in the Global South represent successful fast policy transfer? Focusing on the creative district initiatives in Bangkok, Thailand, my thesis finds that while professional and government narratives illustrate successes, deeper on-the-ground examinations reveal deviations from policy intentions as well as the limits of market-based development. To understand the gap between image and reality, I posit a shift away from conventional planning metrics to a mixed-methods analysis of the roles of actors and socio-cultural capital to explain causes of development. I identify a piecemeal style of development that emerges from public institution and urban form limitations as well as from lifestyles-led, rather than market-led, redevelopment. Revealing implementation complexities beyond policy transfer logics, this research aims to expand analytical approaches and to develop richer examinations of regeneration processes in developing contexts.