Designing incentives for sustainable community development: lessons from Thailand

Situated east of Osaka Castle, Morinomiya not only has the rich greenery of Osaka Castle Park and the lush waterside of the Second Neya River — it’s conveniently located near stations for the JR Loop line, Chuo subway line, and the Nagahori Tsurumi-ryokuchi line. It even faces the major Chuo-odori Street.

With the opening of Osaka Metropolitan University’s Morinomiya campus and a new railway station on the horizon, Morinomiya is being scouted for various community development initiatives conducted in collaboration with the university and local communities. Continuing the efforts of a successful fieldwork excursion last December to envision the form that local development may take, another event took place at the neighborhood’s former UR branch office. In addition to guest presentations on international case studies and perspectives, the event encouraged attendees to discuss where and how urban environments interact with nature.

Our guest was Kalaya Kovidvisith, the co-founder and director of FabCafe Bangkok. She spoke extensively on projects giving urban citizens agency within their communities. As development commences in Morinomiya, it is crucial to consider carefully how to design relationships between urban residents and their environment.

Text: Chiaki Ogura
Translation: Gina Goosby
Photography: Ryo Matsumoto
Editorial: Nami Urano (SPCS)

The currently unoccupied UR branch office will be renovated into a local development center where residents and various enterprises can communicate and collaborate. This area east of Osaka Castle has seen major redevelopment in past centuries — what do locals want to see now? Naturally, residents’ lifestyles as well as the unique characteristics and history of Morinomiya will be central to future development. From the perspective of the human-nature relationship, this area holds unique potential for innovation not found in central districts like Umeda and Namba.

The questions at hand: What is abundance? What is civic pride? Isn’t a good town one where residents take pride in and respect their way of life, even compared to other places? Moreover, a major future concern for residents will be whether diverse global perspectives can be effectively incorporated into community development. For instance, is it possible to implement disaster preparedness measures with minimal disruption to waterfront ecosystems and lifestyles? These sorts of questions must be answered to preserve the local culture.

Upon completion, we hope the former UR office will be a place for the entire community to face important challenges together. To further this goal, we invited Kalaya Kovidvisith to speak about her work and motivations in creatively engaging with social issues in her home country of Thailand.

Kovidvisith’s projects create impact by designing culturally informed incentives and programs in collaboration with experts. This session provided a valuable opportunity to reaffirm perspectives that are essential to community development with a wide range of stakeholders.

Kalaya Kovidvisith has been a lecturer at Thammasat University’s Faculty of Architecture and Planning since 2004; she also founded FabCafe Bangkok in 2014. She specializes in forming interdisciplinary teams with multiple stakeholders to find new solutions. In particular, she seeks out multifaceted, creative approaches to social and environmental issues through strategic application of fabrication technologies.

At the outset, Kovidvisith asserted that global warming — in her words, “global boiling” — is an imminent crisis for every person on the planet. From there, she discussed several differences between Thailand and Japan.

As Thailand’s infrastructure and government services are not as well-developed as those in Japan, Thai citizens must act independently to create services and solutions that the Japanese government provides for its people. However, to tackle deep-rooted issues such as widespread poverty and urban air pollution, Kovidvisith emphasized the importance of accelerating cooperation among enterprises to develop economically and ecologically sustainable business models. It is crucial, she said, to link nature to technology to uplift communities.For instance, to address labor shortages in agriculture with technology,

FabCafe Bangkok actively engages young people with immersive educational programs, expediting solutions to national challenges. In the process, these youths receive a dynamic learning experience while participating in the design process, empowering them to be movers and shakers in tomorrow’s world.

This upcoming generation of “digital natives” is necessary to carry out these important projects, according to Kovidvisith. Even now, this world is no longer ours — it is theirs. Her goal for the next five years is to carry out further programs with these technologically proficient, open-minded young people about modern Thailand’s urban challenges.

Kovidvisith outlined three essential components in her project design process: balancing incentives and motivation, activating ideas into action, and cultivating lifestyle trends to enable scale and retention. Incentives are particularly important since, according to Kovidvisith, projects should not be initiated “just for fun” — rather, they should be materially meaningful and rewarding experiences for participants.

Sustainable development relies on the triple bottom line of people (social), planet (environmental), and profit (economic). Solving social or environmental issues in isolation is not sufficient; likewise, without profits, a meaningful project cannot survive.

Kovidvisith introduced a number of case studies to illustrate the importance of her three keys.

The first case study was a girls’ education program conducted in collaboration with the U.S. Embassy in the Mekong River basin. The river runs about 4,300 km from northwestern China to its mouth in Vietnam. Along its length, there are over 30 major dams, which devastate the environment and livelihoods of people downstream. Part of this is due to the design of the dams, which block sediment and organisms from flowing downstream.

The issues with the dam’s design are obvious when comparing it with this dam in Japan’s Masudagawa River, which was designed with consideration for the local environment. The Masudagawa dam allows for the flow of organisms and sediment.

Kovidvisith investigated the areas around these dams with students involved in the project. In the process, they found several previously abundant areas with disrupted ecosystems and dried-up rivers. These factors, compounded by drought, make it impossible for fish and other organisms to survive, which in turn negatively affects local fishermen. If these trends continue, those fishermen will have no income.

Interrupted sediment flow also impacted plant life of the ecosystem, causing large amounts of algae to die off and accumulate in certain areas.

Kovidvisith and her colleagues believe that Mekong River algae could hold a solution to restoring the ecosystem, and they are now searching for new uses for it, such as packaging, building materials, and food. As part of the project, they invited a Michelin-star chef to research preparation methods for their algae product. They tested dishes from Thailand and beyond, such as dumplings, ravioli, and pasta.

Additionally, students conducted market research to determine if these algae-based products could promote an improvement in eating habits. They then moved into food design. The typical Thai diet is carbohydrate-rich, and children gain weight easily. In response, one group proposed an energy bar composed of algae and other produce to contribute to a healthier diet. Another group put a spin on the Vietnamese sandwich banh mi: they kneaded seaweed powder into the buns.

The final presentations were attended by the mayor and local business owners. Following the workshop, five new companies were formed.

Establishing a cycle of incentives and motivation boosts engagement and increases the likelihood that ideas will be put into action. While altruism is vital to enact social change, societies like Thailand with a relatively low standard of living cannot sustain projects on altruism alone. Kovidvisith asserted the need for clear benefits to stakeholders — namely, opportunities to earn money.

One other important aspect of this project is its focus on both environmental issues and women’s employment. The incentive here was not just improving the livelihoods of fishermen, but also leveraging algae newly endangered by environmental degradation to create new products. In doing so, this project could provide new opportunities for young local women.

Kovidvisith’s next case study was a project targeting farmers grappling with labor shortages and changes in the environment. While industrialization has polluted Thailand’s air and waterways, poverty is still unfortunately common. To help riverside residents face these challenges, several groups of students created a variety of prototypes.

This next project took place in Chachoengsao and was a collaboration with TK Park and Muang Chachoengsao Municipality Office. Invasive water hyacinths have long grown in Thailand’s waterways; in some coastal areas, their growth was controlled naturally by the influx of seawater in the early part of the year. However, in recent years, the weeds have grown out of control, choking rivers and interfering with boats.

Water hyacinths are known for their ability to purify water by absorbing certain elements, and they have traditionally been harvested as animal feed. Even now, they are often fed to industrially farmed livestock. Students in the project investigated two methods for handling water hyacinth: developing new weeding tools, and finding alternative uses for the excess weeds instead of sending them to landfills.

The former team created a remote-controlled weed harvester, deploying it in 2022. Whereas community-led weeding efforts often rely on several people laboring together, the remote-controlled harvester only needs one operator and can make removal of water hyacinths and floating debris more efficient.

The second team dug into the water purification abilities of water hyacinths and created a simple home water purification system. The tough, fibrous roots of the hyacinth can absorb nitrogen, phosphorus, and other substances from wastewater, making it safe to drink. This sort of low-energy solution is practical and usable by locals.

Talking theory can only go so far in creating action. By the same token, solutions with connections to culture and lifestyles are much easier to sustain.

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, skateboards became so popular with young people that in some places in Thailand, they have tripled and even quadrupled in price. The Waste Surfer project was made to solve this problem by making high-quality skateboards out of alternative materials such as foam sandals and reed mats. Furthermore, by making the manufacturing process open source, the team furthered their goal of accessibility. The initial prototypes were made with various manufacturers and sold out quickly. Maybe it’s not enough for products to be high-tech or ethical — they have to be cool.

According to Kovidvisith, today’s youth don’t choose tools and products for their design or how they solve social problems. Rather, they are sensitive to items that match their culture and lifestyle.

Leveraging trends can be a highly effective way to implement sustainability strategies. While Waste Surfer addressed the demand for skateboards to create a new platform for waste upcycling, another case study sought to combine people’s desire for communication platforms to promote plant ownership.

THAI GHOST COMIC XR was a project in which cutouts of ghosts with QR codes were assigned to certain plants. Upon scanning the ghost with their smartphone, users would see a question and be able to leave their answer alongside those of other users with the same plant. These XR ghosts functioned as simple message boards for plant owners to communicate.

The plant ghosts became popular icons, and the app was popular with young users who could use it to communicate with friends. THAI GHOST COMIC XR was featured at FabCafe Bangkok’s exhibition for Bangkok Design Week 2024, under the theme “Livable Scape.”

When creating a new business model, it’s important to consider how to sustain that business. Namely, how can we attract the next generation to participate in value co-creation, so that a business or service can continue into the future? Kovidvisith concluded her talk by encouraging the audience to consider ways to support tomorrow’s leaders in learning about the world and their role within it.

After the case study presentation, participants formed groups to discuss community development in Morinomiya as if it were their own neighborhood. In these discussions, they reflected on Kovidvisith’s three keys to development, exchanging opinions on incentives and motivation, creating action, and integrating culture.

Although Kovidvisith’s projects may appear radical, her theories on development hold significant insights even for the different social and cultural conditions of Japan. What are the key issues in Morinomiya? How can we incentivize development activities? When ideas arise, who will be necessary to act on them? How can these be connected to local culture? We hope that this session will inspire exciting, grassroots projects that make use of the diverse ecosystem east of Osaka Castle.