1. Background
Nangloeng is an ancient community located in Bangkok’s old town, with a rich history and cultural traditions. Nangloeng is one of the many land in Bangkok belong to the Crown Property Bureau (CPB). Although people live there for generation, they don’t own the land but rent it from CPB. The land surrounding the temple Wat Kae belongs to the temple and has been partly encroached by people (generally poorer) who are not paying rent.
Things are set to change in the near future because a new metro (MRT) line will pass by Nangloeng, and a new station will be built right on the edge of the community. If we look at the masterplan drafted by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, we can see that the area of Nangloeng is red, which means “intensive commercial development”

The new metro line is affecting many communities across Bangkok. In many cases people protested, so that the State Railway Department (SRD) has been working on a “reduced-impact design” for the station.

2. Objective
To supporting communities in developing a community-led masterplan for transit-oriented development that would benefit the community, because a new metro station is not only a threat, it can also represent a great asset. Our aim is to devise a masterplan that integrates the new station within the community, not only physically – accommodating the evicted families within Nangloeng, designing the space around the station, etc – but also from the social and economic point of view.

3. Process

• E-Lerng+Openspace team linked to Thammasat University for a 4th year Urban Planning studio which took Nangloeng and the new metro station as case study. The focus of the course is analyzing the context and made proposals from a planning perspective.
• The students visited the community in groups. Each group visited a different area and talked with different people.
• The students divided in 5 groups, went back to the community again to do some research, conduct interviews and mapping. They also analyzed the planning regulations, the legal framework and the MRT Project. They developed 5 masterplan which is in different area related to this project.
• Presented the masterplan at Phrom Phrap Sattru Phai district headquarters, with representatives from the district, the community, and the CPB attending.
• Discuss with communities. Though It’s just a university project to raise awareness of the possible future developments in this area, Some people has a upset seeing their house swept off and make way for malls and skyscrapers, and started boycotting the community meeting. Deng, community leader, told us that it was better to wait a few weeks for things to calm down, so until now we had problems in engaging with the community.
• We have to wait for them to work things out among themselves first. We started a process of research and processing information to make it more legible through maps. So we produce “layered maps” highlighting different issues and can be over imposed to see connection between issues. 

4. Next Action Plan

• Meeting the CPB: a big meeting between the community and the CPB is being organized for mid-December, to discuss the future development of the area, starting off from Thammasat students’ proposals. Also lecturers from Thammasat University and Openspace team will attend. It will be very important to understand the CPB intentions and the real room for a community-driven masterplan.
• Low-impact station design: The State Railway Department will soon announce its revised plan for the station exits and which buildings and families will be affected.
• Community workshops: we hope we can be able to start going with our planned activities as soon as the community is ready. Despite the problems we experienced, we think the process we planned is still relevant; it only needs to adapt the timing. The first step will carry be a mapping workshop, aiming at: