Assessing the Potential for Sustainable Development in the Intermediate Size Cities of Southeast Asia: The Experience from Thailand

This first chapter sets the tone of, and the parameters for, the field project in Chiang Mai and for the content and emphasis of the book chapters. It begins with a discussion of Chiang Mai as an intermediate size city within the urban system of Thailand, which was formally planned in the 1980s to provide the country with a network of growth poles in an attempt to decentralize the fast growing Bangkok metropolitan region. It uses this designation, and the inadequate support it received from the central government over the last twenty years, to explain why Chiang Mai, the designated regional growth center of the Northcm region, has been falling further behind in its efforts to provide quality services to its population. It continues with a brief treatment of the issue of sustainability as it is adopted by the project and is used in the book, and then discusses the potential role of intermediate size cities in the sustainable development of their regions. It then uses the framework provided by these discussions to present and explain the structure and organization of the book and its sections, to introduce the chapters, and to explain the approaches taken by their authors in fulfilling the requirements of the book project.