Article

Urban Studies
2017, Vol. 54(12) 2763–2779
Ó Urban Studies Journal Limited 2016
Cycling the city, re-imagining the Reprints and permissions:
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city: Envisioning urban sustainability DOI: 10.1177/0042098016652565
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transitions in Thailand

Frans Sengers
Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands

Abstract
Urban sustainability transitions are journeys of transformative socio-technical change to set
course for an envisioned future city. These journeys start out in the minds of change agents as
vague conceptual images inspired by far-flung ideals, which are then further substantiated and
articulated as ‘urban imaginaries’ – shared understandings of what constitutes a desirable future
city. The conceptual contribution of this paper lies in demonstrating the power of the urban ima-
ginaries notion to studying the process of envisioning in the context of sustainability transitions.
By following a number of prolific Thai cycling campaigners through the streets of several cities in
Thailand – focusing on the urban imaginaries they articulate – this paper shows how urban sus-
tainability transitions are envisioned from the bike saddle, how these imaginaries are mobilised to
empower cycling and how a seemingly disparate set of urban development pathways converge
around technological artefacts and material infrastructure.

Keywords
cycling, imagniaries, sustainability, Thailand, transitions, transport, urbanisation and developing
countries

᪈㾱

෾ᐲਟᤱ㔝ᙗ䖜රᱟ⽮Պᢰᵟਈ䶙ѻ᯵ˈⴞⲴᱟѪኅᵋѝⲴᵚᶕ෾ᐲ䇮ᇊᯩੁDŽ䘉Ӌਈ䶙ѻ᯵
࿻Ҿਈ䶙ّሬ㘵㝁ѝ⭡䘌བྷ⨶ᜣᡰ੟ਁⲴ⁑㋺ᾲᘥ᜿䊑ˈ䘉Ӌ⨶ᜣ䲿ਾ䘋а↕ާփॆᒦ㺘䗮Ѫ
“෾ᐲᜣ䊑”ˈণሩҾӰѸᶴᡀањ⨶ᜣᵚᶕ෾ᐲⲴ‫⨶਼ޡ‬䀓DŽᵜ᮷൘ᾲᘥкⲴ䍑⥞ᱟኅ⽪Ҷ෾
ᐲᜣ䊑ⲴᾲᘥሩҾ⹄ウਟᤱ㔝䖜ර䈝ຳѝⲴኅᵋ䗷〻ѻ᜿ѹDŽᵜ᮷൘⌠ഭཊњ෾ᐲⲴ㺇䚃к䲿
䇯Ҷ⌠ഭ僁㹼䘀ࣘⲴཊսཊӗරّሬ㘵ˈ䟽⛩‫⌘ޣ‬ԆԜᡰ㺘䗮Ⲵ෾ᐲ⨶ᜣˈኅ⧠Ҷ僁㹼㘵ྲօ
ኅᵋ෾ᐲਟᤱ㔝ᙗ䖜රࡽᲟˈ䘉Ӌᜣ䊑ྲօ㻛⭘Ҿ᧘ࣘ僁㹼䘀ࣘˈԕ৺਴ᶑⴻ䎧ᶕ࠶ᮓⲴ෾ᐲ
ਁኅ䐟ᖴྲօ≷㚊㠣ᢰᵟᐕ㢪૱઼⢙䍘ส⹰䇮ᯭкDŽ

‫ޣ‬䭞䇽
僁㹼ǃᜣ䊑ǃਟᤱ㔝ᙗǃ⌠ഭǃ䖜රǃӔ䙊ǃ෾ᐲॆ઼ਁኅѝഭᇦ

Received March 2015; accepted May 2016

2764
Introduction
Cities are critical sites for ‘the making’ of a
sustainable future society. As great concen-
trations of incumbent socio-technical sys-
tems imbricated in the daily lives of millions
of urbanites, they are obdurate structures
that stubbornly resist changes toward sus-
tainability (Hommels, 2005). But as caul-
drons of creative imagination, they are also
seedbeds for opening up new spaces for sus-
tainable alternatives (Bulkeley et al., 2015).
It is on this interface between the struggling
forces of transformative change and obdu-
rate stability that the research agenda of
‘urban sustainability transitions’ – journeys
of transformative socio-technical change to
set course for an envisioned future city – is
situated (Bulkeley et al., 2011; Nevens et al.,
2013; Rutherford and Coutard, 2014).
As a contribution to this emerging
research agenda, this paper argues that the
road to urban sustainability is paved by
imagination. Transition pathways start out
in the minds of change agents as vague con-
ceptual images inspired by far-flung ideals,
which are then further substantiated and
articulated as envisioned urban futures that
are able to attract a wider following
(Hodson and Marvin, 2009). This paper
contributes to the study of urban sustain-
ability transitions by revealing how the
notion of ‘urban imaginaries’ – shared
understanding of what constitutes a desir-
able future city – can be productively mobi-
lised as a powerful concept to address how
these envisioned futures are put to work to
reshape the present and exert their influence
on ongoing transition processes.
The development and articulation of
these urban imaginaries is explored by
addressing the precarious re-emergence of
cycling in cities throughout Thailand.
Corresponding author:
Frans Sengers, Universiteit Utrecht, Geosciences, Heidelberglaan 2, Room 10.29, Utrecht 3584 CS, Netherlands.
Email: F.Sengers@uu.nl
Urban Studies 54(12)
Cycling offers relatively simple solutions for
a host of complex and persistent urban chal-
lenges; it can be considered an environmen-
tally sustainable and socially inclusive
socio-technical system that embodies an
alternative way to plan, travel and think
about the city (Shove, 2012). It has been
argued that a ‘cycling renaissance’ is cur-
rently underway in many cities in Europe
and the USA, but little research has been
conducted on the state of urban cycling in
other, rapidly industrialising parts of the
world such as Thailand (Oldenziel and
Bruhèze, 2012; Pucher et al., 2011). Perhaps
surprisingly – and despite the fact that
decades of unrestrained motorisation and
car-oriented development have made sure
that the Thai city is a challenging habitat for
the bicycle to flourish – there are signs that
cyclist numbers are increasing in Thailand as
well. A new vibrant subculture of cycling
enthusiasm and advocacy has emerged to re-
establish the bicycle as an integral part of an
envisioned future cityscape.
At the forefront of this development are
Thailand’s tireless cycling campaigners.
‘Transitioning’ to an urban transport system
based on the bicycle, they are saying, is a
sure way to bring the city that is imagined
into actuality. During the summers of 2012,
2013 and 2014 I conducted six-and-a-half
months of ethnographic fieldwork with
cycling campaigners in and around Bangkok
(the county’s one and only megacity located
in central Thailand); in Chiang Mai, Korat,
Khon Kaen and Ubon Ratchathani
(medium-sized regional capital cities in the
north- and northeast); and in Nan (a small
town in the upper north). To immerse myself
in the cycling activism scene, I became a
cyclist myself (using a bicycle for both short
and longer trips) and joined two cycling
Sengers
clubs that branched into cycling advocacy
(cycling along with other members during
weekly trips and signing up for other advo-
cacy meetings and events). This provided the
opportunity to observe cycling advocacy in
action from the inside and to meet other
cycling campaigners.1 In order to learn about
their ideas and ideals I conducted 19 in-depth
interviews with these cycling campaigners as
well as 66 additional interviews with other
‘mobility experts’ – such as transport engi-
neers, urban planners, policy makers, NGO
employees and taxi drivers – to put into
broader perspective the campaigners’ cogni-
tive frames and views about cycling. I also
collected other relevant source material from
reports and archives, such as transport statis-
tics and media coverage on cycling.2
The findings in this paper are presented in
the form of a condensed narrative, crystallised
in a few ethnographic moments. In the next
few pages we will follow three prolific cycling
campaigners – Tum (a bicycle club president
from Chiang Mai), May (an environmental
activist from Bangkok) and Yut (an civically
engaged architect from Korat) – who mobilise
various urban imaginaries to sketch out the
contours of desirable urban futures. Three
urban imaginaries articulated by the cam-
paigners will take centre stage: ‘the sufficient
city’ (the virtues of a romanticised version of
Thai village life in the past appropriated to
the present-day metropolis), ‘the living city’
(the ecological principles of a pristine natural
world extended to the seemingly artificial
urban world), and ‘the creative city’ (fierce
competition amongst globally connected cities
to attract creative professionals as boosters of
economic growth, which animates technologi-
cal projects of urban renewal).
Envisioning urban sustainability
transitions
The process of envisioning plays a key role
in bringing about urban sustainability
2765
transitions (Hodson and Marvin, 2009,
2010; Späth and Rohracher, 2010, 2015). As
coherent images of desired future socio-
technical system states, visions foster collec-
tively endorsed ambitions and a sense of
shared direction amongst different kinds of
change agents, which should ultimately lead
to convergence in terms of action. Visions
should be seen as not merely descriptions of
distant future realities, but as ‘performative
actants’ in the here-and-now that shape
infrastructural and technological trajectories
(Van Lente, 2012). While the ‘Transition
Managament’ school of thought views the
articulation of ‘transition visions’ as a delibera-
tive and formally organised activity meant to
create consensus on long-term orientation, the
‘Strategic Niche Management’ school thought
stresses the immediate implementation and
specification of ‘expectations and visions’ in
real-world experimental projects (Loorbach,
2007; Schot and Geels, 2008). According to
the latter, the articulation of expectations and
visions substantiates the promises attached to
‘radical novelties’ – new green technologies or
otherwise novel socio-technical configurations
– and in doing so it brings change agents
together and provides them with legitimacy
and a sense of shared direction in pursuit of
new technological pathways.
My perspective on the role envisioning in
transitions departs from these ideas in two
major ways. First, contrary to the Transition
Management school of thought, productive
envisioning is not necessarily a deliberative-
and formally organised process to build con-
sensus but it can also be a distributed process
amongst change agents who articulate path-
ways to very different futures. Visions of the
future are ubiquitous, individual and specific
and a shared understanding is not a prere-
quisite for the (re)emergence of low-carbon
practices (Berkhout, 2006). Like discourse
coalitions of ‘bootleggers and Baptists’ –
who were united in their support for an offi-
cial ban on selling liquor in the USA during
2766
the era of prohibition, but for obviously very
different reasons – so too can advocates of
alternative socio-technical configurations
(such as cycling) strive for very different urban
futures while strategically mobilising each
other’s visions and arguments (Yandle, 2000).
Second, contrary to the Strategic Niche
Management school of thought, visions centre
not only on ‘new’ technologies or otherwise
novel practices but also on ‘old’ technologies
and mundane practices (such as cycling).
Interesting questions can be found in the ‘sha-
dows of innovation studies’ with regards to
how dormant remains of past socio-technical
regimes come back to life and how innovation
journeys start over again as foreshadowed by
ways of the past (Shove, 2012: 363).
Instead of these notions of visions and
expectations, I want to use the term ‘urban
imaginaries’ to engage with the process of
envisioning transformations in urban set-
tings. Edward Soja broadly defined imagin-
aries as ‘interpretive grids through which we
think about, experience, evaluate, and decide
to act in the places, spaces and communities
in which we live’ (Soja, 2000: 324). Later
work on ‘social imaginaries’ specified that
such ‘interpretative grids’ find expression in
images and stories, which are geared to fos-
ter a shared understanding of the social envi-
ronment and provide a sense of legitimacy to
certain practices (Taylor, 2002). Another
valuable addition is provided by the recent
work on ‘socio-technical imaginaries’, which
adds that imaginaries are future-oriented and
reflected in the propagation of specific tech-
nological projects (Jasanoff and Kim, 2009).
An urban imaginary, then, can be conceptua-
lised as a form of social/socio-technical ima-
ginary articulated to bring about certain
desirable future city.3 Building on further
insights from the fields of Science and
Technology Studies (STS), Social Movement
Theory (SMT), and the Geography of
Sustainability Transitions (GoST), I want to
further unpack to notion of the urban
Urban Studies 54(12)
imaginaries in the context of sustainability
transitions by highlighting three things.
First, there is a definite spatial compo-
nent to urban imaginaries. Imaginaries are
not only future-oriented but also spatially
bounded and geographically specific – they
are centred on specific geographical spaces
or territories and geared toward understand-
ing place-based dynamics (Ponte and Birch,
2014). While the early literature on sustain-
ability transitions conceived of envisioned
futures in an a-spatial way as transforming
only the structures at the level of socio-
technical regimes (i.e. the societal function
of mobility based on privately owned steel-
and-petroleum cars and the way the auto-
mobility regime is engrained in user routines
and the societal fabric at large), later geogra-
phical contributions have added that this
also implies a transformation in spatial
structures (i.e. the urban form, the power
relationships between territorially defined
entities such as nation-states and cities and
the ways people experience local places – see
Sengers and Raven, 2015). Empowering
urban sustainability transitions thus becomes
not only a matter of re-thinking societal
functions, but also a matter of ‘re-envision-
ing places’ (Hodson and Marvin, 2009: 520).
As such, the notion of urban imaginaries
puts places (real and imagined cities) firmly
at the centre of analysis. Most of the cycling
campaigners that I encountered during my
fieldwork emphasised their identity as urban
citizens firmly rooted in their respective
home towns and they invariably stressed that
establishing cycling as an everyday mobility
practice would improve the conditions in
these places.
Second, urban imaginaries have technolo-
gical and material manifestations. A choice
for certain technologies and infrastructures
over others is implied in the future world
dreamed up by the proponents of an imagin-
ary. The opposite is also true: technologies
and infrastructures are aligned and imbued
Sengers
with a particular set of imaginaries. Instead
of being merely ideas that might rise to pro-
minence in the mental worlds of social
actors, imaginaries can be said to be
‘inscribed’ onto the material world of tech-
nological artefacts. Scholars from the field
of Science and Technology Studies have
long since argued that ‘the technical’ and
‘the social’ are deeply intertwined and that
technological trajectories and future social
order ‘co-produce’ one another (Jasanoff,
2004; Latour, 1990). Sheila Jasanoff’s recent
work on ‘socio-technical imaginaries’ –
which she defines as ‘imagined forms of
social life and social order reflected in tech-
nological projects’ – suggests that imagin-
aries are highly political as well (Jasanoff
and Kim, 2009: 120). She argues that ima-
ginaries not only describe attainable futures,
but they prescribe what kind of futures ought
to be attained. Imagination, then, features as
a type of cultural resource for change agents
to project onto a technology ‘visions of what
is good, desirable and worth attaining for a
political community’ (Jasanoff and Kim,
2009: 122–123). An urban imaginary thus
fulfills a dual function: on the one hand, it
features as the aim/outcome itself (a certain
desirable urban future) and on the other
hand it helps in providing the tools/means
(legitimising certain technological projects)
in order to achieve this (Kuchler, 2014). The
urban imaginaries that surround the practice
of cycling should be seen in terms of this
dual function, prescribing how a desirable
future city ought to be ordered with the help
of a mundane technology such as the bicycle.
Third, urban imaginaries imply agency.
The sustainability transitions literature high-
lights the emergence of alternative ‘struc-
tures’ (alternative socio-technical systems
geared toward dislodging incumbent
regimes), but also the role of ‘agency’ (indi-
vidual or collective action in setting up
experiments with alternative technologies
and in envisioning sustainable futures).
2767
Transitions toward sustainability are paved
by imagination and the crucial first step
toward breaking with the structures of
incumbent socio-technical systems lies in
mobilising the creative capacity of change
agents to imagine an alternative future.
Therefore, I want to highlight this type of
‘cognitive work’ by individuals, who are
articulating and co-opting alternative ideals in
order to tell persuasive stories of how their
city ought to be reshaped. In social movement
research, such advocates are called ‘movement
intellectuals’. Social movements emerge on
the basis of intellectual activity and through
the agency and activism of movement intellec-
tuals whose role ‘is that of providing a larger
framework of meaning in which individual
and collective actions can be understood’
(Eyerman and Jamison, 1991: 115). Social
movements and their intellectuals are impor-
tant actors in supporting (or frustrating) cer-
tain technological innovation journeys and
socio-technical transition pathways (Elzen
et al., 2011). They are actively involved in the
reshaping of the ‘cognitive territory’ or ‘con-
ceptual space’ that surrounds social issues
and technological artefacts (Eyerman and
Jamison, 1991). Movement intellectuals can
be considered especially effective creators and
mobilisers of imaginaries, thus paving the
way for these ideas to become embedded in
the minds of others as the next step to convert
what is imagined into actuality (Harvard STS
Research Platform, 2015). The cycling cam-
paigners whose voices echo throughout the
next sections of this paper are movement
intellectuals who are in the business of reshap-
ing the cognitive space – as well as the physi-
cal space on the streets – where the struggle
for sustainable urban futures is being waged
(Aldred, 2013).
Cycling the Thai city
It is six o’clock on a Sunday morning and
Chiang Mai city is quietly waking up. My
2768
neighbour, Mr Kung, is already up and
about and he greets me with a smile as I step
outside. After sharing some breakfast on his
porch, I ask Kung if I can borrow his bicycle
today. He nods and after briefly searching
his shed, Kung returns with an old two-
wheeler. By the look of it, the bicycle has
not been used for some time. ‘There’s no air
in the tyres’ says Kung as he hands me a
pump. The state of Kung’s bike nicely cap-
tures the state of the practice of cycling in
Thailand’s cities: taken to road once more
after years of neglect and decline. Although
the non-motorised two-wheelers had largely
disappeared from the streetscape in the last
three decades, they were not ‘gone’ to the
point of no return. Like Kung’s bicycle, they
were parked in dusty corners, waiting for
somebody to mobilise their idle capacity.
With minor efforts, such as pumping the
tyres, they could enter the cityscape once
more and reclaim part of the lost road space.
And this is what has happened over the last
few years: old bicycles as well as new ones
have been unleashed upon the roads, and
many cities in Thailand are witnessing the
precarious re-emergence of cycling.4
After pumping the tyres of Kung’s bike, I
hop on the saddle and say my goodbyes.
There are no bicycle lanes and, to get to the
other side of the main road, I lift the bike
over the high concrete slabs that separate
the one-way traffic lanes, dodging the honk-
ing cars that zoom by. Chiang Mai and
other Thai cities present a challenging habi-
tat for the bicycle to flourish. Decades of
‘unrestrained motorisation’ (i.e. automobile-
oriented development combined with inef-
fective land-use planning and control) and
newfound comfort in the motorbike and the
motorcar were accompanied by changes in
travel patterns and urban form as the
mixed-use streets and a tightly women urban
fabric gave way to congested inner-city high-
ways and urban sprawl. To reclaim the
streets, cyclists are fighting an uphill battle
Urban Studies 54(12)
for new rule sets (e.g. bending the traffic
laws to allow bicycles to ride contra-flow on
one-way streets) and dedicated bicycle-
friendly infrastructure (e.g. bicycle lanes and
bike-sharing systems).
Upon arrival at Tha Phae Gate square,
the former main entrance into the walled
city, I spot a group of cyclists perched atop
their bike saddles. As members of a local
bicycle club that has branched into cycling
advocacy, they gather here every Sunday
morning before venturing out together in
their brightly coloured lycra outfits. ‘Long
live the King’ is printed on a blue-and-yellow
jersey; ‘stop global warming’ (leik lok ron)
can be read on a steering-wheel-mounted
basket; and a metal bike frame is creatively
decorated with bamboo strips so that it
looks like a wooden bicycle. The bicycle club
president, a kind middle-aged man called
Tum, rides up to the front of the group and
picks up a megaphone. The ancient city wall
looms behind him as he gazes across the
crowd. After a brief speech, he mounts the
megaphone on a bicycle and signals that it is
time to go. Instead of his voice, the club’s
song now echoes through the megaphone
speaker: ‘get on the bike saddle and ride,
ride, ride! With harmony, brothers and sis-
ters, all for the campaign!’. The cyclists ring
their bells and roll out of the old gate and
into the city. Before leaving the square, one
of the cyclists removes his helmet to wipe the
sweat off his brow. Tied around his head is a
red bandana with the words ‘two wheels
looking at the city’ (song lor phor muang).
The claim on the bandana implies that the
bicycle is more than a vehicle to move
around town, more than a mere means of
urban transport. Cycling can be viewed as
socially produced motion that extends
beyond ‘the brute fact’ of physical movement
and includes the experiences and representa-
tions tied with up riding a bike (Cresswell,
2006). For those involved in cycling advo-
cacy, the bike represents a way forward –
Sengers
not merely from A to B but in the direction
of an imagined urban future (Furness, 2010).
By explicitly linking cycling to a way of see-
ing the city, the bicycle on the bandana
becomes a lens through which to look at
urban development with new eyes. It
becomes a tool for re-imagining the city.
Re-imagining the Thai city
The sufficient city
After heading out of Tha Phae Gate and rid-
ing their weekly round through Chiang Mai
city, the cycling club sets course for the Huai
Lan reservoir. This reservoir is one of the
many Royal Projects littered across the
mountains that surround the northern Thai
valley city of Chiang Mai. Building on the
prestige of the Thai king, these high-profile
projects are geared to support local tradi-
tional livelihoods and they enable the con-
struction certain kinds of technological
infrastructure.
When we stop for a morning snack, I sit
down beside Tum – the cycling club presi-
dent. Tum tells me that there is more to a
cycling campaign than infrastructural tech-
nicalities but that underlying ideals are an
important starting point. Part of the ideals
that Tum stands for are revealed when a kid
on a brightly coloured fixed-gear bike rolls
by. ‘These youngsters’ he says ‘they cycle
more kilometres in their daily life than we
do; they achieve our Sufficiency Economy
ideals without trying to do so’.
The Sufficiency Economy (settakit pho
piang) evoked by Tum alludes to a way of
life propagated by the Thai king. Mobilising
the Sufficiency Economy in the context of
cycling thus creates the association between
the bike to the auspicious persona of the
monarch. As Tum explains: ‘the King recom-
mends people to live in the sufficiency way
and cycling in everyday life is a good way to
respond to our King’. The Sufficiency
Economy is essentially a ‘localist’ philosophy
2769
that stresses the need for an economic system
based on a ‘firm foundation of self-reliance’
(Hewison, 2000). It presents a romanticised
picture of village life in the past as the key to
Thailand’s future. Or – in line with the re-
emergence of cycling – as the King himself
put it: ‘We have to go back to do things
which are not complicated and which do not
use elaborate expensive equipment. We need
to move backwards in order to move for-
wards’ (King Bhumibol’s 1997 birthday
speech, as quoted in Pasuk, 2005: 161).
According to Jim Glassman the notion
Sufficiency Economy effectively challenges
‘a long-standing geographical imaginary’ in
which cities are viewed – as the trailblazers
of economic development and modernity –
pave the way to the future for lagging rural
areas. Instead, it produces ‘a counter geogra-
phical imaginary’ in which cities are danger-
ous sites of social and moral decay whereas
small villages are hailed as pristine sites of
traditional community, social simplicity and
moral strength. In this way, ‘rural Thailand
was pictured, at least in its ideal form, as a
repository of positive social values being lost
in the scramble towards urban modernity’
(Glassman, 2010: 1302). Especially compel-
ling in this respect is the way in which an
illustrated book about the King and his suf-
ficiency ideal depicts the Thai city (presum-
ably Bangkok) as a place of ‘greed and
extravagance’ (see Figure 1).
Yet, despite all this preoccupation with
virtues of village life, the Sufficiency
Economy can also be mobilised as a philoso-
phical guide to promote a particular kind of
urban future. An interview I conducted with
an official at the Traffic and Transportation
department in Bangkok, who regularly
cycled to work, nicely illustrates this point.
This transport officer expressed a clear con-
cern with the modern development pathway
upon which Bangkok – the alleged city of
greed and extravagance – had embarked and
went to some length to explain the King’s
2770
Figure 1. The Thai city as a place of greed and
extravagance. ‘A demon of the dark called ‘‘GREED’’
came and visited and asked the people to leave the
village. Most of the villagers abandoned the village
and went to live in the ‘‘City of Extravagance’’’.
Source: Walker (2008). Available at: http://
asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2008/01/28/royal-
misrepresentation-of-rural-livelihoods/.
ideal version of a self-sufficient model farm.
‘Normally the King applies this to farmers’,
he added ‘but this can also apply to the cit-
ies’. While lamenting the loss of a sense of
community his words carry us back to the
days before neon-lit skyscrapers and chronic
traffic jams – a time when Bangkok was as
allegedly a serene collection of homely
neighbourhoods with orchards situated
along a network of canals. The interviewed
official duly concluded that the city’s future
lay in returning to this imagined past (‘move
backwards in order to move forwards’ as the
King had said). This implies a culturally
conservative urbanism that is more ‘self-con-
tained’ with relatively sheltered neighbour-
hood communities.
The corresponding transport system revi-
sions he proposed in order help to realise
these ideals tell us something about the pos-
sible material manifestations of this ‘suffi-
cient city’. Besides ramping up water-based
transport and re-instituting the old network
of royally decorated trams, the official
argued that cycling provides an excellent
addition. It would seem that the humble
bicycle fits the bill as a simple and inexpen-
sive machine (‘do not use elaborate
Urban Studies 54(12)
expensive equipment’ as the King had said)
and as a vehicle suitable for travelling within
a self-sufficient tight-knit urban village com-
munity. It is in such ways that rural suffi-
ciency is drawn into the urban realm.5
The living city
Although trumped by the staggering amount
of motorcycles, university campus grounds
in Thailand are hotspots for bicycles and
cycling promotion. These ‘protective spaces’
are seedbeds for experiments with innovative
non-motorised transport infrastructure and
with new ways of using old bikes (Smith and
Raven, 2012). One technical university in
Bangkok features a particularly active group
of students and lecturers, who set up an on-
campus bike-sharing system and a range of
other measures to increase bicycle use and
visibility.
It is on the campus grounds of this tech-
nical university that I first met May, an envi-
ronmental activist who branched into
cycling campaigning. In order to stress the
symbiotic relationship between being a
spokesperson for both bikes and trees – for
both the promotion of city cycling and the
conservation of pristine nature beyond the
city walls – May lays out her story:
We have worked from the mountains and riv-
ers to the sea, but now we want to come back
into town . We decided to start campaigning
for cycling in Bangkok because it would
address directly the environmental problems
and the bad air quality . and also because we
want to stimulate a paradigm shift. We want
to change the perception of the road from a
space for cars, to a public space and a common
resource.
The notion of urban space as ‘a common
resource’ resonates with broader ideals of
democracy and equality, but it is positioned
here as first and foremost an environmental-
ist ideal. Other life forms besides humans
Sengers
should also be able to tap into the common
resource in order to thrive within the city.
‘We live where the wild things are’ May
reminds us ‘the ultimate sustainable develop-
ment indicator is biodiversity and that
includes other life forms’.
To present the ideal of ‘the living city’ – a
bustling ecosystem habitat for humans and
other species – to the public and to attract a
wider following, May and other environ-
mentalists have enrolled citizens throughout
Bangkok in a participatory exercise of air
quality mapping. The exercise mobilised the
people of Bangkok to count the number of
species of ‘lichen’ – micro-organisms highly
sensitive to air pollution – on the trees in the
city. Keeping in mind that techno-scientific
knowledge and imagined forms of social
order are ‘co-produced’ (Jasanoff, 2004),
this illustrates how an ‘ecotopian’ interpreta-
tion of ‘the good city’ is reflected in the way
knowledge about the city is produced.
May’s articulation of the ‘the living city’ is
not conjured up out of thin air, but it has its
predecessors. Scholars of the city have long
since stressed the parallels between the natu-
ral world and the modern metropolis – from
Ebeneezer Howard’s garden cities to Robert
Park’s urban ecology. Even as early as the
18th century, the medical discovery of the
blood circulation system convinced city plan-
ners that blockages of various sorts of mobili-
ties were bad for the health of the urban body
(Sennett, 1994). It would seem that the urban
body is alive with the flow of traffic and peo-
ple through its road veins and street arteries
while green areas, while parks and green areas
function as its oxygen-producing lungs. The
metaphor of the lungs is especially compelling
from the environmentalist perspective; it sug-
gests that the encroaching of dead concrete
and cold steel on urban greenery is tanta-
mount to self-mutilation.
This discursive weapon was employed by
May and her friends when ‘developers and
speculators’ converged on Bang Krachao – a
2771
lush green expanse, which has been dubbed
‘the lungs of Bangkok’. Satellite images and
aerial photos reveal a green oasis seemingly
untouched by modern development around
it. This is also what it was in the old city
plan: a large green dot on the map that was
off limits for the construction of high-rise
condominium buildings and housing estates.
Seemingly unnoticed (or deliberately kept
silent) the old plan expired and some mem-
bers of Bang Krachao’s local community
started to sell their lands to well-paying
developers. Upon hearing about this, envir-
onmentalists and engaged citizens spurred
into action to stop the new plan from facili-
tating the ‘devouring of the city’s lungs’ (see
the campaign picture in Figure 2).
A collective bike ride through this pristine
oasis was organised as a way to back up the
demand to undo the new plans. This high-
lights another relationship between spokes-
persons for the bicycle and environment: the
bicycle is not only articulated as the pre-
ferred mode of transport for the imagined
‘living city’ but it is also a vehicle that is lit-
erally mobilised in the fight to achieve it. An
environmental activist, who helped to orga-
nise the Bang Krachao bike ride, explained
this in the following way:
The strategy has to be something that people
can ‘get’ easily. It’s not the green area, it’s not
the sidewalk, but it’s the bike. Because it’s
fashion nowadays for people to bike . and
the media love bike tours. In making the green
area issue appealing, we use biking instead of
the green area directly.
After the bike ride, cyclists, environmental-
ists, local residents, journalists and politi-
cians gathered under the rooftop canapé at a
forest clearing in Bang Krachao. A former
prime-minster and a spokesperson for the
Bangkok Bicycle Campaign both gave a
speech about the need to retain this space
as-is for sake of all of Bangkok as an essen-
tial green area with good cycling paths; a
2772 Urban Studies 54(12)

Figure 2. Devouring the lungs of the city. Campaign picture to save Bang-Krachao: ‘new city plan geared to
devour the lungs .Bang-Krachao. past-and-future’. While the colourful part on the left represents the
green city of the past, the grey part on the right is presented as a dystopian future.
Source: Big Trees Project (2014). Available at: http://bk.asia-city.com/city-living/news/save-bang-kachao-bangkok (I got this
directly from a campaigner at the time who put it on Facebook – he claimed to have made this).

tranquil oasis for wildlife and for city dwell-
ers who want to get away from the city’s
hectic buzz. Finally, the microphone was
given to a local resident. She humbly pre-
sented herself as ‘just a villager’ (chao baan)
and she voiced a different set of concerns
and reasons for conserving Bang Krachao:
I have seen a lot of people who sold their lands:
at the end they are poor and they do not suc-
ceed in life. It’s like the ghosts of their ancestors
cursed them because they sold their lands for
money . Let’s launch a campaign not to sell
the lands of our parents and grandparents [and]
teach the children not to be overambitious or
high-flown or fraudulent. Please save the land,
grow trees, tend gardens and work for a living
in accordance with the Sufficiency Economy.
Then we can live on this piece of land happily
and then it will be sustainable.
The campaign to conserve this green area
thus features an interaction between two dis-
tinct urban imaginaries. While some are
mobilising the green image of ‘the living city’
to prevent the grey, lifeless city from closing
in (Figure 2), others are mobilising the royal
image of ‘the sufficient city’ to prevent being
engulfed by the city of greed and extrava-
gance (Figure 1). And while the campaign
slogan of the environmentalists is directed
outward (citizens, politicians and media
throughout the whole city need to be mobi-
lised to stop the lungs of the urban body
from getting devoured), the proposed cam-
paign slogan by the villager is directed
inward (strengthening the moral fibre of
local youngsters, who should be convinced
not sell the lands of their parents and grand-
parents and act in accordance with the will
of their ancestors and the King’s Sufficiency
Economy principles). Taken together, they
seem to be saying that both the majestic for-
est and the traditional lifestyle of the local
community are rooted in soil of Bang
Krachao and that both should be conserved.
Although there is a degree of complemen-
tarily between the ‘conservationist’ ethos
preached by the actors who give voice to
either of these two urban imaginaries, this
might be best characterised as an
Sengers
opportunistic coalition consisting of local
residents, traditionalists and environmental-
ists. While not all local villagers ascribe to
the green image and associated environmen-
talist values, hardly any of the interviewed
environmental campaigners ascribes to the
royal principles of the Sufficiency Economy.
One environmental activist – a self-identified
‘Napoleon’ in the discursive battle for Bang
Krachao – explained in a Machiavellian way
that ideas such as Sufficiency Economy can
be used instrumentally for other purposes: ‘I
use it all the time . nobody in this country
wants to be up against the King’s project’.
In a similar vein, it might be the case some
of the local residents also adopt a pragmatic
approach to dealing with sources of power
and expertise when they deliberately posi-
tion themselves as ‘just simple villagers’ who
adhere to the Sufficiency Economy princi-
ples. This might be a way to imbue their
cause with royal power and as a way to get
the bicycle-riding environmentalists to use
their knowledge of the law to dispute the
new land-use plan in court.
The creative city
The night sky lights up with bright pink
lights bouncing off the Ya Mo statue in the
city centre of Korat. A few dozen hip young-
sters are lounging around on their fixies and
BMX bikes, waiting for tonight’s collective
bike ride to begin. A civically engaged
architect-cum-cycling campaigner called Yut
arrives on the scene. He is seated on a retro-
styled racing bike – complete with a flower
basket mounted to the steering wheel and a
vintage leather bag slung across the luggage
carrier on the back. Yut tells me that
these Friday night bike rides are part of
his overarching aim to turn Korat into a
‘creative city’.
The notion of the creative city is inspired
by the work of urbanist Richard Florida. As
cauldrons of innovation and creative
2773
capitalism, cities should aspire to attract ‘the
creative class’ (a highly mobile group of
creative professionals, technology workers,
artists and bohemians) in order to attain a
higher level of economic development
(Florida, 2002). In order to reshape itself in
accordance with the lifestyle desires of the
creative class, a creative city should engage
in efforts of ‘placemaking’ and urban
renewal (some would say gentrification) as a
way to outcompete other aspiring cities. The
logic of economic competition within a glob-
ally connected world is at the heart of these
ideas. Take, for instance, the Chiang
Mai Creative City initiative – the most com-
prehensive creative city effort in Thailand –
with the ambition to ‘build a new economic
system based on knowledge and creativity
[as] the key to create our opportunity
and advantage in the international
arena’ (Thailand Creative & Design Center
(TCDC), 2012). Accordingly, the physical
layout of the urban environment ought to be
reshaped with this goal in mind (see the crea-
tive city map, Figure 3).
Back to Yut and ‘his’ city of Korat.
Much like Chiang Mai, Korat is a rapidly
growing medium-sized town. It is situated
on the road between Bangkok and the
remote northeastern part of the country
(Isan) as passage point for the many urban-
rural migrants who shuttle up and down
between quiet villages and the hectic mega-
city. While the ‘mundane city’ of Korat is
traversed by a multitude of domestic labour
mobilities, the ‘creative city’ of Chiang Mai
has been able to tap profitably into the
transnational flows of capital and tourists.
What would it take for the city of Korat to
steal Chiang Mai’s thunder and become a
similar node within such a global network of
circulation? Questions of this sort were
posed one hot summer evening, when Yut
and a motley crew of other engaged citizens
and creative professionals – academics, city
planners, musicians, B-Boy dancers (i.e. the
2774 Urban Studies 54(12)

Figure 3. Turning Chiang Mai into a creative city. An envisioned map of the old city centre of Chiang Mai
based on various kinds of creative businesses, institutions for higher education and sites for tourists. The
makers of this map present an image of how the city should be ordered in accordance with their creative
city ideal.
Source: TCDC (2012). Screenshot from Chiang Mai Creative City promotion video (see references).

creative class) – gathered in a café in Korat work as labourers in a factory or on a con-

to discuss the future of their hometown as a
creative city.
Though inspired by the work of Richard
Florida, Yut articulates an interpretation of
the creative city differs in a few respects. In
Yut’s view, creativity is not the preserve of
the creative class, but a distributed resource
that resides in every urbanite and villager.
The challenge for Korat might lie not so
much in attracting creative professionals
from far and wide, but rather in preventing
outflow of its local people. Seated on the
saddle of his vintage bike, Yut formulates
the quest for the creative city in the follow-
ing way:
Turning Korat into a creative city means that
local people do not have to go to Bangkok to
struction site. They can be proud of their own
city and have creative opportunities here .
This also means we can solve the problems of
the nation.
Building a bustling creative city in Korat,
Yut would argue, is a way to keep local crea-
tivity and economic energy contained within
the poor northeast of the country. It would
stop these energies from draining away
toward Bangkok where they could super-
charge further feelings of discontent between
this peripheral region and the all-absorbing
capital megacity. Urban imaginaries are thus
neither fixed nor limited to reshaping cities;
they require local ‘translation’ to fit with
other priorities and they interact with socio-
spatial configurations at other geographical
Sengers 2775

scales, such as nation-states and transna- Conclusion

tional networks of exchange (Sengers and
Urban sustainability transitions are journeys
Raven, 2015).
of transformative socio-technical change to
Architects like Yut are keenly aware that
set course for an envisioned future city.
new transport systems and material infra-
These journeys start out in the minds of
structure have the power to transform the
change agents as vague conceptual images
urban fabric. He envisions a prominent role
inspired by far-flung ideals, which are then
for a radically novel bicycle-based mass tran-
further substantiated and articulated as
sit system (a ‘bike rapid transit’ system) in
‘urban imaginaries’ – shared understandings
spearheading the transition that would turn
of what constitutes a desirable future city –
Korat into a creative city. To substantiate
that are able to attract a wider following.
this idea, he sketches out a comprehensive
The creative capacity of change agents to
network of bike lanes and bike-sharing sys-
imagine alternative urban futures – and to
tems encased within glass-and-metal tubes
project these ideas onto technological arte-
towering above the roads on concrete pillars
facts and material infrastructure – is criti-
– literally elevating the bicycle above the car.
cally important in bringing about
The promotional pictures for this revolu-
transformative socio-technical change.
tionary transit system are presented to the
I have argued that this notion of urban
Mayor and to other creative professionals
imaginaries provides a valuable addition to
gathered at the Korat creative city meeting.
literature on urban sustainability transitions,
These pictures reveal multiple urban ima-
because it highlights that visions of the
ginaries – the creative city, the living city
future are ‘anchored’ (i.e. place-based, spa-
and the sufficient city – in interaction. The
tially bounded and geographically specific),
first image shows lively buzz around one of
have a ‘politics of materiality’ to them (i.e.
the elevated stations generated by a coming
they are normative and aligned with particu-
and going of creative professionals and other
lar kinds of infrastructural development)
users (the creative city in action). Another
and to be realised they require ‘agency’ (i.e.
image represents a birds-eye view of the sys-
cognitive efforts by intellectuals to persua-
tem, revealing that large chunks of the roof-
sively articulate how the proliferation of a
top are covered with lush green vegetation
particular technological artefact, such as the
(the living city in action). Yut has also
bicycle, is aligned with the articulation of an
brought a large poster depicting three farm-
urban future worth striving for).
ers wearing straw hats while wading in a
To illustrate this point I mobilised my
paddy field, seemingly out-of-place next to
ethnographic fieldwork with urban cycling
the glittering steel-and-concrete structure
campaigners in Thailand. Inspired by what
carrying the elevated bikeway, which has
Büscher and Urry (2009) have called ‘mobile
been labelled as a ‘sufficiency route’ for the
methods’, one part of this fieldwork was
occasion (the sufficient city in action). Taken
conducted ‘on the move’, visiting relevant
together, these images illustrate that see-
campaigning events and cycling along with
mingly irreconcilable urban imaginaries
the actors to observe their ‘wheeling and
(especially the outward-oriented creative city
dealing’ real-time in physical space. Another
and inward-oriented sufficient city) can be
part of the fieldwork was conducted whilst
mobilised (in partial and re-worked form)
immobile, sitting down to conduct in-depth
alongside one another in the design of one
interviews and retrieving contextually rele-
single infrastructural project geared to trans-
vant background information to map how
form the city.
2776
the bicycle is suspended in discursive space.
This combination of mobile and immobile
methods proved valuable not only in learn-
ing about the prospects of urban cycling but
also in sketching out the contours of cogni-
tive territory where the battle for the future
city is being waged.
The voices of the Thai cycling campaign-
ers that echo throughout this paper illustrate
how transitions are envisioned from the bike
saddle; how bicycles become connected to
certain urban futures through their imagina-
tion of these campaigners; and how their dis-
cursive repertoire of tactics and strategies is
geared toward presenting these imaginaries
in a convincing way. Their ideas about what
cities in Thailand ought to strive for are
informed by a seemingly disparate set of
urban imaginaries related to the economy
(‘the creative city’ as a competitive node in a
global economic system); the environment
(‘the living city’ as a pristine part of the
wider natural world), and rural society (‘the
sufficient city’ ideologically represented an
extended version of a tight-knit village com-
munity, reminiscent of a rural utopia). In
such ways mundane technologies such as the
bicycle enable the flows of foreign capital, of
untamed nature and of rural virtue to seep
through the proverbial city wall, thus nour-
ishing an array of imagined urban futures.
But whilst the persuasive articulation and
proliferation of such well-nourished imagin-
aries might be a prerequisite for achieving
fully fledged ‘transition’, it is not a sufficient
condition in and of itself. Despite the recent
buzz around cycling in Thai cities, we should
be modest in terms of claims about a fully
fledged transition toward various cycling
utopias. By definition, transitions revolve
around an uphill struggle between the forces
of change and the forces of stability. In this
case, the forces of change are puny and fra-
gile: they are represented by the precarious
process of institutionalising the bicycle,
which – though by now widely considered as
Urban Studies 54(12)
promising alternative – is currently still
insignificant in terms of modal share. The
forces of stability, on the other hand, are
formidable and deeply entrenched: they are
represented by the principle of ‘unrestrained
motorisation’ and find expression in the rap-
idly growing numbers of privately owned
cars and motorcycles – a trend which is pro-
jected to continue for years to come – as well
as highly a favourable set of industrial poli-
cies to expand the domestic market for cars
and motorcycles made in Thailand (Sengers,
2016).
Even the alleged growth in modal share
that underpins the increasing momentum of
the cycling niche might be called into ques-
tion. The campaigners stress that cycling is a
highly diverse practice featuring an array of
‘mobile subjects’. They have devised various
stylised categories of bike users, such as the
designer (who is interested in vintage bicycles
and attracted the new hip-and-progressive
image associated with cycling), the hardcore
cyclist (who sports an expensive racing bike
for leisure purposes, riding fast and covering
large distances, perhaps as part of cycling
club) and the mae baan or housekeeper (who
rides an old bike, slowly covering short dis-
tances to buy groceries at the nearby mar-
ket). Since the recent buzz around cycling
implicates especially the designer and the
hardcore cyclist, it might – in absence of reli-
able modal share numbers – still be the case
that mundane everyday cycling by house-
keepers and other social groups is not rising
but declining, thus frustrating a broad socie-
tal transition toward sustainability.
Yet, Thailand’s tireless cycling campaign-
ers soldier on. Undeterred by these adversi-
ties, they are nonetheless optimistic about
the prospects for urban cycling in the longer
run. It is evident to them that especially
many young people are at the forefront of
the alleged cycling boom. A cycling club
president from the city of Nan – a sturdy
man in his 60s wearing a traditional blue
Sengers
cotton mon hom shirt with the text ‘Nan: the
old city lives’ – made a sharp distinction
between traditional older villagers (chao
baan) and modern-day youngsters (wailun).
In his view, the former draw on local custom
and live in accordance with the King’s local-
ist ideal of Sufficiency Economy, while the
latter are inspired by popular culture drawn
from the wider outside world. Yut – the
architect from Korat – makes a similar dis-
tinction, but firmly pins his hope on the
these young cycling enthusiasts. ‘One day
these young people might grow up to
become big powerful people (phu yai)’ says
Yut, ‘I don’t think we can make any change
in the next ten years; this generation is
already stuck in the old way of thinking .
But the next generation may have the power
to mobilise a cycling society. When they
grow up, they will be the true change
agents’.
Funding
Funding was provided by the Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO-
WOTRO), grant no. W 01.65.330.00.
Notes
1. Besides reasons of access to data, I joined
these cycling clubs because I also sympathise
with their cause of empowering the bicycle as
a environmentally sustainable and socially
inclusive means of urban transport. While
this was clear to the interviewed campaigners
from the outset, I also made it clear that –
personal convictions aside – I am mainly
interested in cycling because of its rising
popularity in Thailand as a topic that
deserves empirical and academic scrutiny.
2. Besides the content of this source material
from websites, reports and archives, these
data reveal two interesting things on the sur-
face. First, the transport statistics from Thai
cities reveal that bicycles are not counted
today in the modal share numbers, which
reflects the insignificance of the bicycle as a
2777
transport mode as well as the lack of policy
ambition to increase cycling rates. Second,
the number of articles on cycling in Thai
newspapers and popular magazines has
increased very rapidly in the last three or four
years, which reflects the recent surge in popu-
larity of cycling (the interviewed cycling cam-
paigners and other ‘mobility experts’ also see
this as the period that cycling has become
more popular).
3. Urban imaginaries are brought into focus
when actors articulate stories about ‘the good
city’. Here I draw inspiration from the early
stages of my fieldwork in Thailand when I
asked one bicycle-riding activist why he got
involved in a Facebook campaign to promote
cycling in Bangkok. After pondering for brief
moment he replied: ‘I just want to live in a
good city’. This brilliantly simple answer puts
the city and its socio-spatial arrangement
firmly at the centre of analysis and it captures
the essence of stories, tactics and strategies
employed by all cycling campaigners I had
come to know by that time (that is, they all
emphasised their identity as urban citizens
firmly rooted in their respective home towns
and they invariably stressed that if establish-
ing cycling as an everyday mobility practice
would improve the conditions in these places).
From that moment on, the city itself – as
opposed to the practice of cycling – became
my primary object of enquiry.
4. Despite the fact that bicycles are conspicu-
ously absent in current transport statistics,
there is plenty of evidence suggesting that
cycling is rapidly gaining in popularity. In
terms of ‘hard’ numbers, the Thai bicycle
market has witnessed record growth rates
(from 2 billion Baht in 2009 to 6 billion Baht
in 2014), the amount of cyclists participating
in Bangkok’s annual car-free days has grown
exponentially every year (from 150 in 2005 to
20,000 in 2013) and the number of cycling
articles and editorials in widely read newspa-
pers and popular magazines has increased
dramatically (from 1 in 2005 to 33 in 2013 in
the Bangkok Post newspaper as well as dedi-
cated special issues on cycling by popular
magazines such as A Day and Sarakadee).
My in-depth interviews with diverse
2778
stakeholders from across the urban transport
arena suggest that cycling is a marginal but
rapidly growing mobility option. A high-level
transport expert from a big consultancy firm
in Bangkok summarised it as follows: ‘in
recent years more and more people have come
to accept that the bicycle will become an
important mode of transport’, while an
engaged environmental activist argued that
‘in the last three years cycling became an
agenda with the public really quickly and pol-
iticians have picked it up too . it’s now more
established and it’s expanding’.
5. Most interviewed urban planners, transport
experts and cycling campaigners portray their
town as ‘a city in the world’ that needs to tap
into global and regional networks of knowl-
edge circulation and economic exchange,
while the ‘sufficient city’ is steeped in localism
as a place where ‘external economic connec-
tions are, at best, peripheral and at worst
highly disruptive’ (Walker, 2010: 257).
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