Bangkok is much more homogeneous than many other East Asian cities of comparative size. Though the metropolis used to be administratively divided into Bangkok and Thonburi for a while the division really didn’t make much sense historically as well as administratively and it was abolished in the 70’s.
By and large, Bangkok is a one-city metropolis which has grown radially from a small center, the original Bangkok fishing village which later became the Rattanakosin part of the capital (the area of the Grand Palace and the immediate surrounding). The further away one gets from this area in any direction, the more thinned out and the less urban the infrastructure.
This is in sharp contrast to, for example, Metro Manila which rather is several cities grown into one but with several downtown areas at a considerable distance from each other (up to 10 kilometers).
While Bangkok, too, has specific districts dedicated to specific functions, these districts all are part of inner Bangkok. There is the old center on the Rattanakosin island formed by the Chao Phaya River and the Banglamphu Klong; adjacent to it in the southeast is Chinatown, mainly a trade area; to the southeast adjacent to Chinatown is the New Road / Silom Road area which is the modern financial center of Thailand; to the north adjacent to the Silom Road area is the Siam Square area which is the capital’s prime shopping district; and northwest of the Siam Square area, or northeast of the Rattanakosin district, is the part of town with most of the edifices of the national government.
The Beginning of Bangkok
Bangkok’s history of the past 200 years is much interwoven with the Chakri dynasty which still reigns but no longer rules Thailand today. After Chao Phaya Chakri was crowned under the royal title of Rama I in 1782, one of his first major decisions concerned his capital. In short form, it is often said that Rama I founded Bangkok as his capital while before the capital has been Thonburi. However, in this abbreviated form, history is summarized not very accurately.
First of all, Bangkok was not really founded by Rama I. It had been a settled area for several hundred years already and it had even been well-known to European merchants who commonly stopped over at Bangkok on their way to Ayutthaya.
Second, the sharp demarcation between Thonburi and Bangkok is not justified. While European merchants stuck to the name of Bangkok for their place of stopover, the community left and right of the Chao Phaya River was known to the Siamese as the town of Thonburi, having been elevated from the village status of Bangkok.
Thonburi was chosen by King Taksin as his capital. And while it is true that King Taksin had erected his palace and all major buildings on the right bank of the Chao Phaya River, the city of Thonburi encompassed settled areas on both banks.
King Taksin’s rationale had been to have the river flowing through the capital as he feared another Burmese attack after Ayutthaya had been leveled by Burmese armies in 1767; in the case of a new attack he wanted to have an easy escape option. This option was maintained by having the river flowing through, not just alongside the capital. His idea was that he could embark his people and troops rather unnoticed and then make a getaway on the Chao Phaya. His destination would have been his old stronghold of Chantaburi on the east coast, close to what is now Cambodia.
On the other hand, when Chao Phaya Chakri became King of Siam, the Burmese threat was by far not as eminent any more; Siam was again a strong power, on equal footing with the Burmese. Rama I didn’t think in terms of easy escape routes anymore, but in terms of strong defense. He had no intention of vacating his capital, should the Burmese march on it - he wanted to defend it by all means. For this purpose, however, a river flowing through the capital was a disadvantage as it could have served as an hard to secure entry point. Therefore, he decided to neglect the western, larger side of what had been Thonburi, instead concentrating everything important on the eastern side. This included, of course, first of all his own palace.
To make space for his palace where it is still located, a large settlement on the eastern side of Thonburi had to be razed. At the end of the 18th century, the present palace area had chiefly been occupied by Chinese inhabitants . Chao Phaya Chakri had the whole Chinese community transferred some three kilometers downstream, to an area then known as Sampheng. The Chinese still live in that area, and Sampheng Lane now is a famous Chinese shopping area (after it had been a red-light district for many decades).
Work on the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha was by and large completed in 1785. The new capital, now more or less just covering the area on the eastern side of the Chao Phaya was inaugurated under the new name "Krung Thep Maha Nakhon Amorn Rattanakosindra Mahindrayutthaya Mahadilokpop Noparattana Radchhani Burirom Udom Rachnivet Mahastan Amorn Pimarn Avatarn Satit Sakatuttiya Vishnukarm Prasit." In English: "City of Angels, Great City and Residence of the Emerald Buddha, Impregnable City of God Indra, Grand Capital of the World, Endowed with Nine Precious Gems, Abounding in Enormous Royal Palaces which Resemble the Heavenly Abode where Reigns the Reincarnated God, a City given by Indra and Built by Vishnukarm". For convenience, it is the custom to abbreviate the name to Krung Thep. And for their further convenience, Westerners continue to call the place just Bangkok.
Population Figures
Bangkok is by far the largest city of Thailand. It’s safe to say that at least one out of every ten Thais lives in Bangkok. Aside from that, how large Bangkok actually is, seems to be a matter of debate. According to Thailand in Brief, published August 1990 by the Foreign News Division of the Office of the Prime Minister, "Bangkok houses over 5 million people... across 1,537 square kilometers on both sides of the Chao Phaya River." The 128th (1991-1992) edition of the Statesmen’s Yearbook gives the figure of 5.832.843 inhabitants in 1989 and cites as source the Thailand Statistical Yearbook of the Thai National Statistical Office. Other sources put the figure much higher. In their Bangkok book, the Australian-New Zealand Women’s Group declares rather boastfully that Bangkok "boasts a population of over 8.2 million."
Generally, Thai government statistics are not a good source for population data on cities. The reason is that population data is recorded primarily on Changwat level. Changwat is the Thai term for provinces. Provinces are always named after their capital city or town and are commonly treated as if they are just outskirts but otherwise integral parts of the capital city or town.
For the local administration, Chiang Mai City is actually Chiang Mai Province. And in many cases, the administrative unit below the Changwat, the Amphoe, may not be identical with the actual urban area which may encompass the Amphoe Muang (the capital district) as well as other Amphoes.
The result of this administrative structure can be rather confusing. Local government officials worried that their community may not appear grandiose enough commonly pass on the provincial population as the population of the city. Even the above quoted Foreign News Division of the Office of the Prime Minister follows suit. They list as the "10 largest provincial capitals / cities": Bangkok, 5,845,152; Nakhon Ratchasima 2,348,760; Ubon Ratchathani 1,881,427; Udon Thani 1,782,563; Nakhon Si Thammarat 1,401,624; Chiang Mai 1,356,556."
These are obviously Changwat figures. In the case of Bangkok, the figures for the province and the actual city may not diverge much. But Nakhon Si Thammarat certainly doesn’t appear to be as large an actual city as Chiang Mai, and certainly, Nakhon Ratchasima, while a large provincial city, impossibly is almost half the size of Bangkok.
Nakhon Ratchasima obviously ranks second in the list of the Foreign News Division of the Office of the Prime Minister only because incidentally, Nakhon Ratchasima is the largest province areawise (20,494 square kilometers, more than ten times the area of Bangkok province and 4 percent of all of Thailand). Furthermore, Nakhon Ratchasima is a particularly fertile province with a large rural populace while Chiang Mai province is not especially known for agriculture.
The 128th (1991-1992) edition of the Statesmen’s Yearbook gives the following figures of the populations of major provincial cities and towns (based on a 1980 census cited in the Thailand Statistical Yearbook of the Thai National Statistical Office): Chiang Mai 101,595; Hat Yai 93,519; Khon Kaen 85,863; Phitsanulok 79,942; Nakhon Ratchasima 78,246; Udon Thani 71,142; Songkhla 67,945; Nakhon Sawan 63,935; Nakhon Si Thammarat 63,162; Ubon Ratchathani 50,788; Ayutthaya 47,189; Nakhon Pathom 45,242; Lampang 42,301; Lampang 42,301; Ratchaburi 40,404.
But these figures are most probably too low, especially for Chiang Mai, Hat Yai and Nakhon Ratchasima. They may be the figures for the respective Amphoe Muang (see above) which in the case of big cities reflects too few, and in the case of small towns too many inhabitants. As the Thai government counts the people divided into administrative districts (Amphoes), and as administrative districts seldom correspond with the borders of urban settlements, accurate data on the size of urban communities simply doesn’t seem to exist.
Missing in the list of the Statesmen’s Yearbook is Pattaya, considered to have about 100,000 inhabitants by now.
The population of the Bangkok metropolis is probably indeed just over 5 million, and probably Chiang Mai is the largest provincial city, with a population of less than a million.
Economically speaking, the difference between Bangkok and Chiang Mai is greater than it is expressed by a 6 to 1 or even a 10 to 1 ratio. While Chiang Mai is a single city with a large rural hinterland, Bangkok is surrounded by a number of towns and cities with a strong orientation to the capital and an industrial infrastructure pretty much the same as the one of the outskirts of Bangkok.
With a population of some 5 million, Bangkok isn’t really a mega-city in the colloquial sense of the term (strictly defined, any city with more than one million inhabitants would qualify as a mega-city). The largest city of the world, Mexico City, is almost 4 times as big as Bangkok (18.5 million inhabitants, 1989 figure). Several times as large as Bangkok are Tokyo-Yokohama (17.5 million), Sao Paulo (16 million) and New York (15.5 million, including northeastern New Jersey). In the East, Bangkok is surpassed in population figures by quite a few cities. Considered the largest cities of Asia are Shanghai, Peking, Canton and Tonking in China, Calcutta and Bombay in India, Seoul in South Korea, Jakarta in Indonesia and Metro Manila in the Philippines. There are many more in the Bangkok bracket of around 5 million.
