27 Sep 2025

Governor Shachchan opened up the "smart city of living" view, had to take people at the center, use technology on the spot, create a good quality of life.

Mr. Shachchan is a speaker on "Bangkok, a smart city to live in" at the Smart and Livable City Expo 2025 at Room 109, 1st Floor, QSNCC, Khlong Toei District.

1️⃣ City must be smart and people-centered.

The heart of the city is not technology or buildings, but "people," so the development of a smart city requires people-centric, not technology-centric. Smart Enough City means choosing technology that suits the context of the city and addresses the needs of the people without always having to invest in complex or expensive technology because Bangkok has a tight budget.

The core of the city is smart enough. It consists of three overlapping factors: People Desirable means what people want and benefit. Business Viable means business is viable, investment must be appropriate, cost effective, and Technical Feasible means technically feasible.

2️⃣ Traffy Fondue, the platform that changed the way civil service works.

Governor Shushan has named Traffy Fondue as the most obvious example of how Smart Enough works, which has completely changed the way BMA works. That is, Traffy Fondue has been able to turn over 6 million people into the eyes of the city by using the technology that everyone already has, the smartphone to inform the problem, without the BMA investing. It has also changed the Pipeline system that lags the solution to the platform, which allows agencies to compete, serve and solve problems for the people quickly and transparently.

"Over the past three years, up to 1 million cases have been reported through Traffy Fondue and over 870,000 have been edited without the governor signing a single issue, which demonstrates the public's trust in the BMA. Statistics have shown that the average solution period can be reduced from two months to 1.9 days. The data from the platform can also be used to measure the performance of each district and plan the budget more effectively," said Governor Shachchan.

3️⃣ aims for "Bangkok, a livable city for everyone."

Later, he described the key goal of making Bangkok a livable city for everyone, saying that livable cities can attract and retain talent. When there are great people, innovation and investment will follow. Today, Bangkok is the number one city in the world, but it is ranked only 98th place on the EIU scorecard. The goal is to push it to one of the top 50 livable cities in the world. For example, Copenhagen, which was once the most polluted city but was able to develop to become the liveliest city in the world.

"To reach the goal of" a livable city for all "requires a clear plan of action, so it has established a 9-sided, 9-good policy and 226 clear plans of action to make the goal happen, not just a slogan," Governor Shachchan reiterated.

Then I gave an example of the past nine good areas, and mentioned the "Tight-Loose-Tight" management principle to solve the problem of bureaucratic inertia. The first Tight is to set clear and measurable goals, such as how many trees have to be planted, how many meters of sidewalks have to be improved, Loose (slack) is to give each agency the freedom to find its own way to reach that goal, and Tight (taut) is to measure whether it is achieved.

"Urban development must take both dimensions at the same time: Smart City uses smart technology to solve problems on the spot, along with Livable City, creating a good quality of life to make the city where everyone wants to be, convinced that Bangkok will improve and that the technology of the participants will help our city improve."

Smart & Livable City Expo 2025 is an innovative arena that will combine the power of more than 20 Thai and international entrepreneurs to create Smart Solutions in Water Management, Air Quality Control, Waste Management and Traffic Management to help design a more livable city future. It will be held from 26 - 28 September 2025 at the Sirikit National Convention Center.

# Bangkok # BMA