The first entry of this visit is a quick pitch
Unlike New York or Toronto, Bangkok does not have a gridded street plan. Streets (Soi in Thai) meander all over the place. There are dead-ends in weird locations and sometimes streets decide to curl into other streets, apparently just to confuse those using them. The result of this randomness and apparent street planning chaos is a lot of weirdly shaped spaces that are the unnatural left-overs created by those streets and the facing buildings.
I’m sure there are weird, left-over, spaces in every city, but Bangkok seems to have more than its fair share of these apparent dead zones. And just like all other cities, these dead zones often become places to loiter, or to take part in illegal and unhealthy activities.
Recently, a group of individuals and companies have gotten together and created a most unusual and wonderful use for many of these spaces spread throughout Bangkok. They have created a unique way to use left-over spaces that would otherwise have been used for illicit activities or which have become public health hazards. They have created the “Unusual Football Project.” Football, for all you North Americans is, of course, soccer and it’s a hugely popular sport in Thailand, as it is almost every else in the world.
These very creative people decided that football can be played in many ways and so they decided to convert derelict spaces into soccer pitches – oddly shaped soccer pitches that is. These new play areas have become enormously popular in Bangkok. They have allowed kids, who might not have had a place to play soccer, to have fun even if the methods of play needed to be adjusted a bit. This undertaking, in my view, is what good civic projects are all about. The photos will give you a feeling of what these new ‘unusual’ pitches look like. However, to get a really good feeling, take a look at the awesome video below. It describes the real wonder of the “Unusual Football Project.”
This is the first official entry of this visit. Once I get settled, my next pitches will be more original.
Welcome to Bangkok.
Maybe you should try an infill where your workers are staying. At least the ground would be better for an infrastructure.
The workers are gone. The space is soon to be reclaimed for the students, as the school building finally gets completed within the next couple of months. They will use it as a nice outdoor area on their way to and from classes.