Feral Territories: The Suburbanization of Nature in Eastern Bangkok

ABSTRACT Between the 1960s and 1980s, American and international financial and technical assistance spurred men with means to bring together concrete, asphalt, timber, and steel to construct unplanned, poorly serviced (because they were unplanned), and expensive subdivisions at the outskirts of what was then central Bangkok. In the process, they transformed Bangkok's hinterland from rice paddy and forests into feral territories: loosely governed spaces created by a desire to not be governed. In this essay, I offer a historical account of the formation of these territories to show how market logic combined with older ideas about the city to create new material and conceptual conditions that allowed state officials, private developers, and foreign consultants to reframe urbanization as the effect of natural forces rather than deliberate policy decisions. Understanding the longue durée transformation of Bangkok's outskirts physically and conceptually is important because accepting the market as natural helps explain the state's resistance to and ineffectiveness of planning while justifying the city's dysfunction.