With its countless temples, street markets, high-rise buildings and busy streets, Thailand’s capital is full of contrasts. For many Europeans and tourists from all over the world, it is a popular port of call for long-distance travel, and for Southeast Asia it is an important business center. But for more than eight million Bangkok residents, it is one thing above all: home. Sound strategies are needed right away to ensure that such a multi-faceted city remains a place worth living in in the future. What does urban planning look like in one of the world’s largest metropolises? What do people here understand by the term “smart city”? And what is the potential role of innovation labs based on the CityLAB model?
In June 2022, CityLAB Berlin was pleased to welcome a delegation from Jakarta and Bangkok in connection with the EuropeAid project Smart Change, which aims to promote exchange between the three cities on the subject of smart cities, as well as initiating collaboration. After the return visit to Jakarta in November, we got to attend a city threesome in Bangkok, where we got the opportunity to report on our experience in Berlin and find out more about projects in the other two cities. We present a few highlights here.
Old meets new: how the need for mindful urban development unites the twin cities
The five-day delegation trip kicked off with a visit to the Creative District in the heart of Bangkok. How can you put up new buildings in a growing city, create new neighborhoods and meet needs while still preserving old infrastructure and cultural values? These are questions that are relevant in Berlin, too, and certainly in many other cities around the world. They are issues that are currently being explored in the multi-faceted Creative District, where Eastern culture meets Western culture and the old is combined with the new. In addition to traditional stores, workshops, sacred trees and the oldest street in Bangkok, you will find contemporary art galleries, small and innovative businesses and a distinctive gastronomy scene. This is due in no small part to a collaborative venture: the public organization Thailand Creativ & Design Center (TCDC) and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) support local businesses and communities in the creative sector, providing access to knowledge and networking opportunities through workshops and other activities – a very successful collaboration, we believe.
Credit: Smart Change PR
Credit: Lisa Stubert
Credit: Lisa Stubert
Abundance vs. scarcity: how global warming confronts cities with differing challenges
One of the ways in which the partner cities face differing urban planning challenges emerged particularly clearly on a visit to the Flood Prevention Center run by the city administration BMA. While Bangkok is devoting a lot of resources to counteracting the problem of increasingly extreme heavy rainfall events and the risk of flooding these involve, the Berlin delegates reported on the consequences of a changing environment, such as the increasingly frequent dry periods caused by global warming and their impact on urban nature. Here we were able to report on our solutions in the context of agile prototyping. Through our watering project Gieß den Kiez, we have found a way to involve citizens in the preservation of the city’s trees, and through QTrees: we’re looking at how artificial intelligence can help prevent so-called drought stress in trees from the outset. These are projects that attracted great interest among the twin city delegates.
Credit: Smart Change PR
Credit: Smart Change PR
Technological solutions vs. cultural change: how the understanding of smart cities differs
What is it that actually makes a city smart? The fact that there is no simple answer to this question became apparent in the dialog between the twin cities. In Berlin’s view, acting smart doesn’t simply mean implementing digitalization: it’s really about meeting the challenges of the future in a creative, open, purposeful and participatory way. The strategy Gemeinsam Digital: Berlin published in December and supported by CityLAB Berlin serves as a compass for these new ways of working and cooperating, as well as increased agility, and the systematic transfer of knowledge between administration and urban society.
The different points of view regarding the smart city concept clearly emerged through direct dialog. For example, NEXT Creator Space is a center for collaboration between companies, the public sector and academia: here, young people and start-ups are encouraged to use state-of-the-art technologies. The focus is on virtual reality, digital city twins, AI facial recognition and other digital solutions. Meanwhile the FutureTales Lab is a privately funded futurology center that goes one step further to address technology even further in the future. The aim is to provide stakeholders with decision-making tools for planning a better future. Here we were presented with a vision of Bangkok in 2050 that is both innovative and functional, also making use of cutting-edge technologies. In the rooms of the FutureTales Lab, we gave an input presentation about the mission of CityLAB and our beliefs concerning open data and open source, thereby contrasting the different approaches.
Credit: Smart Change PR
Credit: Manuel Risch
Community meets administration: how Ari would like to see an innovation lab modeled on CityLAB
It was in the Ari neighborhood, away from the city’s tourist highlights, that we experienced what was probably the most fascinating dialog of our trip. The so-called Happy Ari District is a community project involving residents that adds a distinctive dynamic to the neighborhood. Whether developing a proprietary currency for local businesses, running community hydroponic projects, or establishing an online service for transportation via electrified tuk-tuks: the key is to pursue science, art, housing and mobility integration from a holistic perspective. But what is missing here is a concrete partnership with the local administration – an aspect where we had a lot to share in terms of our own experience. So for an entire afternoon, the Ari community invited us to attend a joint design thinking session to figure out what a Berlin-style CityLAB might look like in Ari, and look at how open data and agile methods can be used for projects.
Credit: Smart Change PR
Credit: Lisa Stubert
Transforming neighborhoods, adapting to a changing climate, using technology responsibly: this trip demonstrated once again that smart minds care about issues like this – not just in our Berlin bubble but in growing cities all over the world. In addition to contrasts and differing points of departure, there are a lot of similar approaches and interfaces to be found again and again. For this reason, we’re grateful for the exchange and continue to eagerly follow the progress being made in Bangkok and Jakarta so as to be able to learn from each other in the future.
