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'Venice of the East' to be reborn Suvarnabhumi city may soon be known as "the Venice of the East" when it is turned into a state-of-the-art metropolis around the new international airport in the next few years, a city planner said yesterday. Sawang Srisakul, director-general of the Interior Ministry's Public Works and Town and Country Planning office, said yesterday that it was his vision that the new city not only assumed Bangkok's old title but also became the heart of the capital. "My children will know Bangkok as the old town and they will call Suvarnabhumi the new city," he said at a seminar organised by the Airports of Thailand Plc (AOT) and The Nation. Due its geographical landscape, Suvarnabhumi city will be developed as a "water city" similar to Venice, with canals built alongside roads to prevent flooding and channel water to the ocean, he said. The city development plan has been completed and it will be presented to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on September 26, he said. Sawang said the new city would become the first city in Thailand to apply the "specific-town-planning" concept, which restricts the individual design and colour of every building. Suvarnabhumi city will cover 350 square kilometres around the new international airport, he said. Sawang said the "specific town planning" for Suvarnabhumi city was unlikely to satisfy everyone because some will gain and others will lose. Transport Minister Pongsak Ruktapongpisal said yesterday on the sidelines of the seminar that construction of the new city should start sometime between June and October next year. He said the government was expected to approve the city's master plan and its administrative structure later this year. The master plan will be subject to public hearings and the scrutiny of both Houses before it is enforced - a process that will take at least a year, Sawang added. Bangkok governor Apirak Kosayodhin told the seminar he was drafting a community-development plan for communities near the new airport. The plan will help improve the livelihoods of the city's residents and turn the area into a tourist attraction boasting new public parks and canals, he said. But Apirak said he did not agree with a government plan to include Bangkok's Lat Krabang district in the proposed "Suvarnabhumi special administrative body". He also said he was concerned about flooding in Bangkok's Prawet, Lat Krabang and Min Buri districts, which are situated along the airport's water-releasing zone. Teerachon Manomaiphibul, assistant managing director of Property Perfect Plc, told the seminar that 300,000 people lived in the vicinity of Suvarnabhumi. He said that number would swell to one million in the near future, giving it the same population as Nonthaburi, Samut Prakan and Nakhon Pathom. Dr Suwat Wanisubut, deputy director of the Suvarnabhumi airport development committee, said new airports like Suvarnabhumi were not built often so the government must take the opportunity to develop a strategic plan for the area, which was 90-per-cent vacant. "In the next 15 years, Suvarnabhumi will become part of our lives. I call it the city of the future for the new generation," he said. But property expert Manop Pongsatat warned investors looking for easy money from Suvarnabhumi to be cautious. He said the development of a new city usually took 20 years and people might be reluctant to live near a noisy airport. Meanwhile, Bancha Pattanaporn, acting president of the AOT, said the government was expected to decide in the next few months whether no-frills airlines would be required to use Don Muang airport or Suvarnabhumi Airport. |