By the end of the day, each community had drawn a preliminary map of their community, established a working group, and started working on a greening plan for their neighbourhood. While the most obvious goal of the workshop was to educate, it was also designed to empower the community members to become stewards of their land.

After the preliminary workshop a planning day was organized in each community. This planning day included staff from TEI and ICSC, a landscape architect from the BMA, and the community working groups. The first task was to create a map of the new green space that also included existing trees, buildings, utilities, and canals. This map served two functions. First it became the basis of the urban green plan that the community was about to develop. Second, and perhaps more importantly, inventorying the community in this way made residents evaluate their local surroundings as part of the greater environment. The map became a tool that helped raise the level of awareness among residents about their environment and how they could address environmental problems. Using the map as a guide the communities then drew up a list of goals that they hoped to achieve with this project. These goals included increasing the amount of shaded areas and planting community gardens both for personal consumption and for sale. The map was then used to plan out the specifics of the green plan. Finally the community drew up a list of tasks and assigned responsibility for those tasks. Throughout this process staff from TEI and ICSC met with local government officials to ensure that municipal and neighbourhood administrations would support this project.

Implementing their plans between July and October 2000, the two communities organized their working groups and were supported by local governments through the donation of labour, equipment and planting materials (trees from municipal nurseries and seed sources). In Bangkapi, residents selected two small areas (20m2 each) within the community that were overgrown with weeds and garbage. The community cleared these areas and planted a diverse arrangement of local species to provide shade in the future. Along one side of the community runs a canal, the banks of which were filled with weeds and bushes. The community then cleared a 5 m wide, 300 m path along one side of the canal and planted fruit trees immediately adjacent to the canal to stabilize the banks and prevent erosion. They then turned the remaining space into very diverse intensive garden plots. 10 families currently have plots, and that which is produced but not consumed is sold at the road side. Residents estimate that each plot could generate 2000 Baht/month (roughly $55 US). As the average family income in this area is about 10,000 Baht, garden plots have the possibility of increasing household income by 20%.

Bangkok Noi chose to develop a 55x55m field that was in the centre of the community. Along one side of this field is a band of trees and brush. Considerable amounts of construction materials, old bits of concrete, and other garbage had been dumped here. In this case the community chose to prune existing trees, remove the brush and garbage, plant new trees in the field and establish an interlocking brick walking path through the area. There are plans for the local school, which is next to the site, to plant a vegetable garden but this has not happened yet.

¹ For more details see the project web site at: www.icsc.ca/urban/main.html