We assume that and Co will be able to enlarge its capacity to our greed.
Right.
We want more people, we want more buildings, we want more economics, we want more tourists, and we assume that bank can handle it. Whereas the line itself, every line or every infrastructure is haves its capacity, and we also destroy the natural infrastructure to reduce its capacity without knowing.
Greetings, I'm Chris Turny and this is Unfucking the future, and together with you, I'm here sorting through this maze of environmental challenges we're facing. It's easy to feel paralyzed by the climate crisis, but action is at the heart of this show. I'm Fucking the Future celebrates the remarkable individual who are paving the way for a better future and learning how we too can make a difference. Let's dive in Fucking the future. Weird a fucking the future.
When you think of a climate crisis, what do you think of? For a long time, the image of climate change was that lone polar bear abandoned on a small and melting piece of ice. He looks so sad, doesn't he. It's true that polar bears are really suffering right now, and It's also true that the Arctic is melting. I've seen it for myself, but for a lot of people,
climate change just doesn't look like that. In Southeast Asia, which has the most coastline of any region, climate change looks like biblical floods, which are becoming part of a new normal. Seriously, google it. I mean, don't google it now because I want you to keep listening. But if you search for flooding Bangkok, you'll see photo after photo of people using canoes to navigate flooded streets and desperately
trying to push small motorbikes through waste high water. Bangkok is one of the many cities across the world that is sinking, and landscape architects that Kotcha Khan Voracom are fighting desperately to save the city from becoming completely uninhabitable. Kocha Korn our guest today, is using landscape architecture to build more resilient cities. In her hometown of Bangkok, she designed one of the most incredible parks in the world. Here's a clip from her ted talk.
This park is not about getting rid of flood, It's about creating a way how we can leave with it.
So all's to say the reason behind the design of that park is actually pretty sad. See Bangkok is one of many delta cities around the world, which means for autumn flooding, I'm a normal part of life there with many benefits for the ecosystem, but that normal flooding has become far more intense and disruptive as a planet is heating up. What Bangkok is dealing with now is something new and dangerous, and this demands radical adaptations.
It's never been a small town when I was born, but to see the town's expanding and more dense, I just feel that this is kind of part of like growing up and seeing the city confronting with many challenges, like in terms of population, in terms of density, in term of the climate crisis, in terms of environmental degradation. So I think that's like who I am as well. The city is like who you are as part of
you as a person. So Bangkok is it's a fun city, lots of culture and you may not that Tailan hasn't been coronized, so I think the culture is quite there. The city is there for probably two hundred plus years as the capital of Thailand.
Like many cities that have grown fast. Bangkok has been paved over with a lot of concrete, but all that concrete has disrupted the natural cycle of flooding and the landscape's usual sponginess.
Yes, so when it's flood, is actually flood on top of the concrete because the water don't know where to go. So we have this big path of huge urban setting that cover on top of this flood plain, and we cut off many canals and at some point we lose sense of how we connect to the land and then the cycle of the water.
And growing up as a child in that environment, I mean, especially when the flooding was happening, was that something that was as a child? Was that fun when you had the flooding, Oh my gosh.
She's the best part of the whole year. Because you need to go to school, school.
Clothes, we don't know how to get there, because the whole.
Story was like water that was fun. I think the.
Water is quite clean enough that you know, like we can play and you know, like be part of life. And I think when it's flood we just take out the boat and then.
You know, seeing or race boat racing and there's so many other culture in Thai culture that relating to a flood, it's good.
Water is a essential part of Thai identity and culture, like for Tongue is an annual nationwide festival celebrating the water spirits where locals and lanterns floating down the river, and the Thaire New Year Festival Song Kraan is a giant water festival where people throw water at each other in the streets in celebration of the New Year.
And people call us amphibious. Right, you know how to leave it wet and dry?
That's lovely, that's great. Let's say I think that's wonderful. It's a beautiful fort, isn't it. But as floodings become more intense and more frequent, water's influence on Thai culture has become less fun and more serious. In twenty eleven, Thailand experience the largest flood in a century. The entire Thai Floodplain, which makes up a central region of the country, flooded. It started in the less populated central north of Thailand.
During that time, the government attempted to build makeshift dams and barriers that would stop the flooding from continuing down to Bangkok. This trapped water in impoverished areas in the countries north, but nothing can prevent the water from eventually coming to Bangkok.
So Bangkok is of course delta city. Right. The whole water had to come through the city to go into the ocean.
Which meant that the entire city had to evacuate.
All the news, all the business had to close down, airport couldn't function, the whole cities become very empty. Because people like your neighbors living and yes, but for some people, poverty is become very part of the society, right, they kind of move any other place, so they and I have to stay in the flood, right, and you're thinking about electric city systems that you know, all this thing has very become very dangerous. So situation is getting like
either you die or you survive. Millions of people have to move. And I think that's become like the deep fear of other Bangkokian that when it's going to happen again.
And for Couchucorn, it was an alarm bell. Our country was in crisis.
We assume that Bangkok will be able to enlarge its capacity to our greed. Right, we want more people, we want more buildings, we want more economics, We want more tourists, and we assume that Bangkok can handle it. Where it's the land itself. Every lane or every infrastructure is has its capacity, and we also destroyed the natural infrastructure to reduce its capacity without knowing.
Bangkok is a city famous for its canals, which provides essential flood mitigation, irrigation, and transportation. But to make room for city life, developers have cut off many of the canals from the riverways. In other instances, the canals are being completely dredged and filled in with sand or concrete.
We destroyed wetland, we destroyed canals. We didn't concern that the whole watershed have to go to. Bangkok is have to be a wet city, a wet design. It's signed to get wet and its signed to get dry. But when we want to be modernized, all this construction of the city like high rise and things is the language of commonality that we understand about the city, but we forget that the city is not a piece of paper.
It's actually situated on the landscape is the wetland. The city has forget it's landscape, the land, the ground.
To put the crisis in perspective, Cocha Corn offered this comparison, and the.
Cellpa is getting melt. It's increasingly what quite one eighth or two millimeters per year? That's right, really yeah, but we sink two centimeters per year, So that's mean we sink for a time faster than a sea level is rising.
So you've got storm surges and intense rainy seasons and at the same time we're drawing out more water from below the cities, and the number of people living there is increasing by the day. It's the perfect storm. And the practical upshot is the cities are actually sinking, and the big question is can we reverse it? Is anything we do going to be enough.
We have solar farms and many other sources of renewable energy, and of course we are talking about energy transition, but how fast we willing to change?
Some delta cities are taking much more substantial measures to address for flooding issues. Indonesia has chosen to create an entirely new capital. The new city will be on a different island from today's capital Jakarta, one with high hills and far less people. But Kocha Korn says this idea is a non starter in Thailand.
But for US we don't even talk about moving Bangkok right cusually or whatever. Politically is very sensitive and as a politician, if you talk about I'm going to move Bangkok, You're not going to get any word from the day one.
Right, it's a new capital. It's a new capital, isn't it. Chakata will remain as a city. But it's an extraordinary adaptation, isn't it? To a sinking city will move a capital.
But I just feel that as the est used to call us amphibious, we have ability to be wet and dry, and I just feel that if you want to remain Bangkok as is, we need to go back to be more amphibious.
Which would be a huge shift from what Bangkok looks like today. For most of it's modern history, Bangkok has dealt with flooding by building gray infrastructure or traditional engineering solutions. I think sea walls, ditches, and dams.
Those solution is based on fear. So all the solution is actually making us less resilience.
Which seems incredible, doesn't it, Because you know, the traditional for me growing up, the view that was always pushed was we can just engineer our way out of these problems. We put more gray engineering in We're putting more dams, more sea walls, and we'll be all right. And what we're realizing increasingly is it's just that's that's a dead end, that is not going to get us out of this. It's all built for resilience we so desperately need.
Yes, I just feel that we are so caught up into like this number. The bigger, the better, the stronger, the more concrete, the better, the safer we will be. And it's proved us wrong right throughout.
This and we've had in mind. Koltchakn decided to create a completely new park in Bangkok. As a landscape architect, she's focused on addressing boath for needs of the people who will use the space and also the needs of the city itself.
We use nature as our mediums like architects they use concrete, they use class that use structure right before landscape architects. We have trees, we have soil, we have plants, we have biodiversity. This is the language of our professions, and how can we use the design to enhance those materials is living materials.
In this urban setting.
So landscape architects is actually the job that kind of like finding the balance between cities and the nature and its landscape. Event it has been destroyed, we help to re claim. Event it has been forgotten, we helped to recreate.
And that's what culture Corns set out to do. When Chula Longkorn University, the oldest university in Thailand, put out a request for proposals, but what to do with eleven acres of land in central Bangkok as part of their centennial celebration.
And the plot of land is actually in the middle of the city. The price of the land itself right now is probably one billion US got people, yes, So it's like at at the heart of Bangkok, and people might assume it can be many other things. I'm not a shopping malls and do you think we need my shopping mill in Bangkok?
Okay, We've got to pause here for our segment. Holy fuck, Bangkok has almost sixty males. The largest is over five and a half million square feet. That's bigger than Vatican City, and they just keep coming. Bangkok hadn't opened a new park for thirty years until Kochakorn created hers. But during that same length of time, Bangkok built a whopping thirty six mega malls. These babies are multiple flaws, tricked out with the latest trends and cooled down the best air
conditioning in the city. But it's not just the energy they used today, it's the energy and pollution caused to build these monstrosities. Cement is a super polluter. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world, after China and the US. So when Kolchakor makes this quip about shopping malls, she's totally serious. They really are a huge climate issue in Bangkok. It's the kind of fact that makes you say, holy fuck.
So we propose to have like an architecture for some function, but the main concept is actually creating mitigation for flood to adaptive design of the park.
The entire park is built with floods in mind. One end of a park is elevated, sitting on the top of a small museum, and the hill serves an important purpose. It allows the water to drain down to the retention ponds that Cochacorn built throughout the park. Because Bangkok was built on a floodplain, it has no hills. The water used to be absorbed into the wetlands, but these have long been paved over, So the water needs a place to go, and it needs a bit of help figuring
out where to go once it hits the ground. The hill solves that problem. It's an incredibly simple idea, but it looks elegant and it complements the landscape beautifully. And then can you tell me a bit about how the rain water is actually cleaned by the plants in the park.
So when you tilt the whole park, you have the highest point and then the lowest point, so that drainage pattern is actually equipped with the wetland and with the water plants that can help and clean up the water, and you can just loop that circulation back and forth as part of the recreation areas in the park. That's how the water plants become a major part of how this park function.
And one of the things I think that this park shows so beautifully is it's how we can adapt to climate change. And it's this idea that we can't fight all the changes we're seeing. We're going to have to learn to live with them, or even even thrive amongst them. And one of the aspects of that which I really I just thought was incredible is the bike design you have for the retention ponds in the park, Can you explain what these bikes do?
Soide the level part of the park is this retention pond. So I put like eight bike cycle. It's a water bicycle. And when you come to the park you have to exercise anyway, So we're thinking like how can we make that exercise be part of the urban water system. So when you exercise, you burn your carry and by that that pedal of that bicycle can actually errate it that retention on the energy that you have to put to the bike depends on the water level. It's different every day.
So did you encounter any resistance to your ideas?
How was it?
What was it like actually getting this being built up?
Of course isn't that easy. We probably have a new park every every year. Right, it has been like thirty years without a new park in the Central bankrupt years.
Thirty years good.
Yes, some of our audience hasn't hasn't been born yet, Yes, so thirty years ago, like no more park and you can see how big the city, how dense the city. We're fucking the future, We're work in the future.
Culture Corn faced enormous challenges getting the park opened but today it is considered a huge success and a case study for how to make cities more resilient to flooding.
It's become a very popular place for the youngster, especially through this pandemic period that mental health becomes such a very important thing. So just to have an open space to park that you can come and join and relax is very valuable. And with the purpose of this flooding mitigation, I think if people just come to the park because
it's nice, that's the footstep. But when they start to understand why it's be designed the way it is, I think that's then another way to invite them to understand and be part of this climate solution. It's also or help reduce the ourban heat island in that area. With the research, with the temperature around the park is actually getting better than other block of the concrete buildings.
The park holds up to a million gallons of water, which is so important right now because Bangkok is experiencing some of the most intense rain seasons in its history.
Last year we experienced one hundred years of rain period twice in one season.
Really, the park has also contributed to increase biodiversity in Bangkok, itself.
Natural infrastructure has many co benefits. I'm not only talking about my park to solve flooding, It's also talking about the health of the city, the health of the citizens, the mental health, the open heat island, the biodiversity increased in that surrounding area. We found more thirty type of birds coming. So I just feel that this kind of like nature based solution has mountain beneficial that every city should reclaim, recall, regenerate, regenerate, whatever your nature is.
Cotchacorn is just getting started. All her projects share the same guiding principle. We should rely on the natural environment to guide the way for design. Not if you have a way around, I'm not.
Going to be Not if they stop every development, damn is bad. No, But how can we work to hybrid these two things together. It's about how we can work better with conventional engineer. I think when you work with nature, you need to work with hope, right because you know that the plan that you grow, you're not going to
be completely benefit from it because it takes time. The plan that you grow today is actually not only gonna be fit your lifetime, but it's going to benefit other people's life and continues.
Wow. I absolutely loved my conversation with Kochacorn. I was so impressed by how much she is thinking long term about the unique history of the land she comes from and what she can do to protect its culture generations into the future. And while not all of us are visionary landscape architects, there are still a lot of ways that we can learn from her example, which brings us to our final segment today.
Fuck can I know.
This is a part of a show where we talk about what you at home can do to help fight for climate crisis, and joining us as always is our good friend and activist Maggie Baird. Hi, Maggie, are you ready to create a new Cotchacorn inspired park in Los Angeles?
Well, Chris, I am not there quite yet, but I really wish I could be. I was really inspired by Catchihorn's designs. In our own lives, we can do small things like this. For example, in our house, we took out the grass in our front yard and put drought resistant plants, and in every area of the country it
will be a little bit different. But this also goes to show you how important it is to raise your voice and keep talking about the climate in every aspect of life, and beyond that, I want to direct people to the Nature Conservancy. If you're in the US, you might live in one of the many cities where their North American Citi's network partners with local orgs to co create equitable conservation practices and nature based solutions that address
the voice and the vision of local communities. We can put some links in the show notes because, as we've heard word, nature based solutions can make a tremendous difference in helping alleviate climate extremes.
Thanks so much, Maggie. I love that I'm equally inspired by a story, and I'd love to see more people start working sustainably in their cities. And that's what the fuck you can do? What the fuck can I do? I want to close in this message of hope from Kochacus ted talk she gave back in twenty eighteen.
No matter how rough the path, how big the crack, you push to your goal because that's where your heart is. And yes, Thailand is home. This land is my only home, and that's where I firmly stand my heart. Where do you stand?
Yours?
Thank you? Thank you? How path?
I think we can all learn from Culture Corn's inspiring vision and words. I'm so grateful we were able to have her on the show. That's all for this episode. Next time on I'm Fucking the Future, I'll talk with m Sanjan, the CEO of a world's leading conservation organization, Conservation International, about how we can harness a power of oceans to save our planet.
If you don't have a healthy ocean, you are making it impossible to have a healthy planet. And you know, I think we have spent so little effort focusing on oceans. Generally, the amount of conservation dollars going into it is tiny.
Until then, I'm Chris Turney signing off from Sydney, Australia. Thanks for joining me in I'm Fucking the Future. We're Fucking the Future. I'm Fucking the Future is produced by Imagine Audio and Awfully Nice for iHeart Podcasts and hosted by me Chris Turney. The show is written by Meredith Bryan. I'm Fucking the Future is produced by Amber von Shassen and Renee Colvert. Ron Howard Brian Grazer, Carral Welker and
Nathan Chloke are the executive producers from Imagine Audio. Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges are the executive producers from Awfully Nice, sound design and mixing by Evan Arnette, original music by Lilly Hayden, and producing services by Peter mcgriggan. Sam Swinerton wrote our theme and all those fun jingles. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review Unfucking the Future on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.