Direction of urban expansion in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area, Thailand under the impacts of a national strategy

Abstract

The Eastern Economic Corridor project (EEC), which spans over three coastal provinces east of the Bangkok Metropolitan Area (BMA), aims to transform Thailand into a developed country progressively. The EEC project promises to influence its territory and surrounding areas. We aimed to monitor the urbanized directions at the BMA during 2015-2017 and explore whether the BMA’s urban expansion trend is related to the EEC. The results revealed that the built-up areas increased by 24,033 hectares (22.8%). The urban districts with high urban density slowly developed, while the rural districts tended to urbanize with a high urbanization rate, approximately 6.8% per year. The BMA urban areas mainly expanded to the east (14.9% per year) and southeast (21.6% per year) under partial impacts from the EEC infrastructure projects. The research findings represent a concept for assessing urban expansion and pointing to the regions of concern, which will be meaningful for urban planning and policymaking.