Charan Sanitwong under the MRT Blue Line: The Spatial Process of Capital and Its Impact on Social Life

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between urban development through transportation infrastructure—specifically the MRT Blue Line—and its social impacts on residents of the Charan Sanitwong area. A multimodal method was employed, combining walking interviews and in-depth interviews with residents across diverse housing types—including condominiums, shophouses, and rental houses—with spatial analysis of secondary data used to construct maps and diagrams of land use and appraised land values. Guided by the conceptual framework of the spatial process of capital, the findings reveal three contradictory dynamics. First, large-scale projects are necessary to stimulate consumption: in Charan Sanitwong, condominium construction has generated economic circulation through investment and intensified consumption, while simultaneously devaluing shophouses before the end of their functional lifespan, producing visible traces of abandonment on increasingly valuable land. Second, residents’ spatial practices and perceptions suggest that the MRT project has neither attracted new populations nor triggered rapid economic growth, but rather reinforced Charan Sanitwong’s identity as a residential district. Third, alleyway communities, though marginalized by development, continue to provide cheap labor, food vendors, and street stalls. Their creative strategies of collective renting sustain affordable living costs and proximity to workplaces, yet paradoxically feed into uneven development. Taken together, these processes demonstrate how infrastructural expansion both reshapes and entrenches socio-spatial inequalities in the urban fabric.