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Urban Train Track Doubles as Shopping Alley in Thailand
- enraged_camel 10y agoI was there last month. It's truly surreal. One thought that occurred to me as I watched the train pass was how many safety regulations and zoning laws such a market would violate in most Western cities. Then I realized: laws and regulations can have the unintended side effect of "sanitizing" the more interesting parts of our culture, to the point where everything becomes standard and boring. It's the reason Seattle's Pike Place Market is a tourist attraction even though open-air fish markets are incredibly common all around the world.
- mimimimi 10y agoSome people value safe and boring.
- Pica_soO 10y agoThose drunken one legged beggars in india, who fell asleep on the tracks, beg to differ. But yes, if its so organized as in this case, it has some beauty to it. If the train becomes such a part of the environment, why not install generator rolls below the train, and milk its movements for energy?
- astrodust 10y agoThat generator would produce such a trifling amount of power, and it'd be stolen before you could recoup the cost.
- astrodust 10y agoThere's a local market here (http://www.kensington-market.ca/ http://www.kensington-market.ca/) where a lot of the building code rules are ignored, street-level patios, extensions to stores, and other quirky architectural flourishes are loosely permitted. It's got way more character than your typical neighbourhood and is a great place to spend time. I wish there were more areas like this in cities with relaxed rules on construction and zoning.
- tpeo 10y agoThis probably already is a huge violation of many safety regulations in Thailand.
- jfoster 10y agoTrue; many/most street food vendors are allowed to be present in Bangkok because of an unwritten understanding with authorities. Eventually when the government wants to claim the space for a clearer sidewalk or building development, they set a date by which the vendors in that area need to move on.
- newmanships 10y agoThis just happened last month in one of the more famous areas in Thailand: http://www.khaosodenglish.com/life/2016/10/03/sukhumvit-street-vendors-ordered-off-road-tonight-will-business-usual/ http://www.khaosodenglish.com/life/2016/10/03/sukhumvit-stre... I'm not sure if they are back to business as usual or still gone however.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- niftich 10y agoThere is a wide continuum of lawlessness; this fish market seems to be close to the benign side, where the setting is risky but people have good intentions. As less and less people have a choice about their condition, you get to self-governing slums. Towards the far end of the scale, you find places like Kowloon Walled City, Saipan in the 1980s, and Mong La in Myanmar -- places which external law has failed to penetrate, and are rife with the exploitation of people.
- wmeredith 10y agoYou can take the quotation marks off of the word "sanitizing" in your comment :D
- Camillo 10y agoZoning laws making everything standard and boring and unlivable is a specifically American problem.
- crooked-v 10y agoThe biggest issue, IMO, with a lot of American zoning codes is that they require that retail spaces be specifically zoned to exist at all. This does a lot to prevent the organic growth of small retail spaces that exist in other countries.
- JDDunn9 10y agoHouston has no zoning and it's none the more interesting for it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- oftenwrong 10y agohttps://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard-houston-really-does-have-zoning-sort-of/ https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youv...
- vertex-four 10y agoCould that be because it's the same people and companies building things in the city, based broadly on what's done elsewhere in America? It's very, very hard to develop a culture completely independent of the rest of the country, especially when large amounts of money (and therefore the need to interact with national entities like banks) become involved.
- kuschku 10y agoThat’s true indeed. Many other countries have a lot more relaxed zoning, or accumulative zoning (where, if you zone something as one type, it can be built with that type, or any more restrictive zone – you can always build housing in a commercial district, for example. See Japan). Or places where zoning is only done for specific developments, and then very generally (only restricting height and noise for the development, for example, instead of building type, or restricting nothing at all. See: Germany).
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoIt's awfully selfish of you to value interesting tourist sights over the health and safety of the people providing you with those sights.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pipio21 10y agoOhh, my... I wonder how many people buying there know the mineral oil and the brake disk dust trains release are highly carcinogenic given that food is placed directly under the train. When I was a kid I used trains for making arrowheads from coins(using train wheels as presses) and oil residues are everywhere.
- beambot 10y agoDoes the train have a bathroom...? Old trains used to just dump out a hole and onto the tracks.
- chrisfosterelli 10y agoI don't know about this particular route, but that is still common for trains in Thailand.
- agotterer 10y agoThe train doesn't have a bathroom. I've picked up the train at the market (it's the last stop) and took a ride into the country side.
- seesomesense 10y agoLife is a fatal condition. You can enjoy it while it lasts or spend your minutes agonising over every danger.
- noobermin 10y agoTo be frank, something like this can't happen in the US. Then again, we can't even deliver clean water to all of our residents. Not that we aren't on net, better, but we could be.
- brianwawok 10y agoKids can't walk 2 blocks to school in the US.
- saryant 10y agoI went to Mae Khlong a few years ago, the long way round: a train to Mahachai, ferry to Ban Laem and finally the train that actually rolls through the market. Other than the train that barrels through every now and then, it's much like every other market in Thailand. That said, it's a good day trip, especially if you take a tuk tuk over to the floating market at Amphawa afterward.
- vmlinuz 10y agoIt's not as extreme, but I used to live in this building: https://goo.gl/maps/wqrAnDrxZjs https://goo.gl/maps/wqrAnDrxZjs If you look down, you'll see there's a lively market in the street - clothes and household stuff on one side, food on the other, including live poultry when I was there. If you look a little further down, you'll see the tram tracks running down the middle of the street. Unfortunately, the Street View cars didn't catch a tram, but they do run down that street pretty regularly...
- nithinr6 10y agoThis reminds me of the virtual subway store that TESCO implemented in South Korea - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/8601147/Tesco-builds-virtual-shops-for-Korean-commuters.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/8601147/...
- bobsil1 10y agoElevator pitch: AirBnb for markets
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- derekp7 10y agoI'm surprised that there isn't even a painted line to indicate how far back you have to stand to be clear of the train.
- andreareina 10y agoIn Japan a lot of traditional shopping districts are the ground-floor component of elevated train tracks.