Applying Sustainable City Assessment Framework for Chiang Mai's Future Urban Development

Abstract

Sustainable city development concerns various dimensions such as citizen well-being, urban infrastructure, environmental friendliness, accessible transportation, and solid economics. Effective utilization of resources and energy is inevitable if a city wishes to transit towards sustainability. A sustainable city assessment framework is a useful tool in measuring and evaluating the management of the city resources without negative impact on the environment, facilitating the city to grant the well-being of the citizen in terms of safety, happiness, and convenience. The management can make use of the framework in planning and executing various policies for robust economic growth. Moving towards a status of a sustainable city is of great interest to an emerging city like Chiang Mai in Thailand. As a case study, Chiang Mai is unique in terms of its medium size, with the potential to be the regional hub. Chiang Mai is the 2nd largest city in Thailand, located in a strategic location and surrounded by diverse and nice natural environments, and is the center of medical and education excellence in northern Thailand. In this works, an overview of sustainable city indicators employed for several cities was conducted. The suitability of key indices was evaluated and discussed against the context of Chiang Mai. The Thai government's bio-circular-green (BCG) economy concept was also considered for economic and social development along with environmental protection to properly realize the potential of the city. From the preliminary findings, potential indicators of the sustainable city assessment may be grouped into three main components: economic, social, and environmental. Useful plans and guidelines from the sustainable city assessment framework were also proposed for the future development and expansion of Chiang Mai.