2. Urban Poverty and the Environment: Social Capital and State-Community Synergy in Seoul and Bangkok

Abstract

Abstract: Two low-income communities, Wat Chonglom in Bangkok and Wolgoksa-dong in Korea, provide contrasting studies in the relationship between urban poverty, the environment and state-community synergies. Through different pathways, one self-reliant and one dependent on government, both communities have been improved over time. These improvements were made possible by specific relationships within each community. 1. Urbanization and the Environment in the Pacific Asia Region Over the past three decades East and Southeast Asian countries have been experiencing massive shifts of population from rural to urban areas. From levels of less than 25 percent in the 1960s, most countries are expected to have the majority of their populations living in cities within the next two decades (UNESCAP 1993, UN 1997). While the urban transition is seen as indispensable to the processes of industrialization, economic growth and increases in material welfare, it has also brought severe environmental deterioration. As urbanization in the region continues at an accelerated pace, 30 percent of the world’s increase in urban population over the next quarter of a century will occur in Pacific Asia (UN 1994, Douglass 1998b). Similarly, much of the increase in world pollution and environmental deterioration will be associated with the use and misuse of energy and resources appropriated by expanding cities in this region. Environmental stress is already so great that it has raised the question of whether or not the mega-urban regions now forming in this region will be environmentally sustainable. In Asia at least, the

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