border cities

Persons fleeing the fighting in Burma that choose a legal status have settled in refugee camps. Persons that have gone beyond the law and chosen an illegal livelihood have settled in urban an industrial areas around Bangkok, as well as in cities lining the border between Thailand and Burma. The largest city in the west of Thailand is Mae Sot. The Thai government applies special laws here for border partial citizenship in order to maintain the influx of vulnerable, cheap, disciplined workers.

"Cross-national border development has become an emerging contemporary global phenomenon. Volumes of cross-border trade, investments, and migration across national borders have increased exponentially over the past two decades in many areas of the world. Various intergovernmental agreements and spatial industrialization strategies for each nation have been proposed and implemented under the theme of sub-regional cooperation and regional development planning."

hyperdense cities

An arcology is a hyperdense city designed to maximize human interaction; maximize access to shared, cost-effective infrastructural services like water and sewage; minimize the use of energy, raw materials and land; reduce waste and environmental pollution; and allow interaction with the surrounding natural environment.

in between

nomadic architecture

Modern day Burma is made up of 135 tribes. The Burmans inhabit the central plains. The Mon introduced Buddhism and their state is on eastern coastal Burma. The Shan migrated to Burma from Yunnan province in China and inhabit the northeastern state. The Naga originated from Tibet. The Arakanese have ties with Bangladesh and are being persecuted in Burma for the last 200 years. Upland areas are inhabited by hilltribes of which the Karen are the most numerous.

emergency urbanism

Refugee camps are basically tents or tarps clustered on a grid: long-term built on short-term principles.

"There are scores of such camps dotting the surface of the planet, from Afghanistan to Poland, Burundi to Thailand, in Serbia, Nepal, Iran and Cambodia, a sort of semi-sovereign archipelago spread out around the world, managed by the United Nations and sustained by N.G.O.’s. The people who live there are refugees, noncitizens confined to ad hoc cities, perhaps the purest form of a growing and global phenomenon: makeshift architecture, last-ditch living, emergency urbanism." (Jim Lewis, Exigent City)

encamped livelihoods

"As is common in many refugee situations, Burmese refugees (with status of displaced person) in Thailand are required to live in remote camps along the border in order to receive protection and assistance. However, since the rations they receive do not contain fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and other non-food items, refugees are obliged to find alternative sources of income." (Inge Brees, Vocational training and access to work on the Thai-Burmese border)