Chapter 1

Bhichit Rattakul, the anti-air pollution campaigner who was subsequently elected governor of Bangkok, dons a mask and talks to traffic policemen, a quarter of whom suffer from respiratory ailments. © James Fahn

Chapter 1 explores the Asian mega-city. Each has its own special character, of course, but most are overwhelmed by a flood of migrants, besieged by traffic, smothered in smog and crippled by a lack of planning. That’s particularly the case with Bangkok, my home for nine years, which has suffered tremendously from its inability to enforce zoning laws and (until recently) build a mass transit rail system. But as Singapore and the cities of Malaysia show, urbanization in the developing world doesn’t have to follow that pattern. And even Bangkok–a city of surprises, lush and green once you look behind that gray exterior–may be changing. The election of an environmentalist as its mayor may have marked a turning point in the city’s “environmental Kusnetz curve”, a theory that describes a basic pattern societies seem to follow: as they get richer, their environment first deteriorates and then slowly starts to improve. It’s an evolution that raises all kinds of important questions about how communities interact with their resources, and whether it’s possible to prevent them from harming their environment in the first place.