Even though it has been voted many times as the world's best city for tourists to visit, Bangkok has become increasingly less livable for its dwellers.
As the capital marks its 236th anniversary today, City Hall has little reason to celebrate given that there are a myriad of unresolved problems that will remain difficult to solve, unless it changes the way it operates.
For one thing, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) is a gigantic bureaucratic machine that has not proved its worthiness. With nearly 100,000 personnel and an annual budget of nearly 80 billion baht, the BMA has more than enough resources to make the capital more liveable. Yet, the city remains messy and chaotic.
With the second-worst traffic congestion in the world after Mexico City, according to a global traffic index compiled by navigation company TomTom, daily commutes have been a regular nightmare for Bangkokians for decades. It is estimated that many commuters spend roughly three hours in traffic each day.
It is a problem that many city leaders and other authorities have failed to solve. And it may have something to do with the way they work. There are 37 state agencies tasked with traffic management, planning and development. The sad fact is that most of them work in silos without sufficient inter-agency coordination or integrated planning.
As the city is increasingly choked with traffic due to the rapid increase in the number of cars, the authorities remain obsessed with building more infrastructure to facilitate personal car use. These include the BMA's own plans to build at least four more bridges across the Chao Phraya River to make journeying over the river "easier".
More cars also translate into worsening air pollution. Smog that had put the city's air at levels unsafe for health in January and February this year stands as a stark reminder of how much city residents have to put up with polluted air.
In addition to being less liveable, many Bangkok pavements -- occupied by street carts, used by motorbike riders as alternative lanes or simply left in a state of disrepair -- do not make the city an ideal place for pedestrians to take a walk. The BMA employs around 3,200 city inspectors, or tetsakij, but the city's pavements remain messy and unsafe.
While cars emit ever more air pollutants, Bangkok has the lowest percentage of green space of any major Asian capital. City Hall, meanwhile, is notorious for its obsession with felling trees along Bangkok streets.
As usual, it will likely take the emergency situations caused by the floods of the upcoming rainy season in a few months time for the BMA to wake up and try to tackle the root causes or our annual submersion. City leaders should be coming up with strategies to deal with the problem ahead of time.
The BMA has also been criticised for working in a way that does not court sufficient public participation.
Bangkok governor Pol Gen Asawin Kwanmuang seems to have tried to bring some improvement. For example, last December, he came up with a project to regulate the use of main roads and pavements across the city to bring about orderliness. But it remains to be seen what effect this will actually have on Bangkok's streets.
Pol Gen Asawin and the government needs to realise that the BMA and other government agencies cannot work in isolation when it comes to tackling Bangkok's problems. And they cannot do it without listening to the city's residents first.
Bangkok has many charms to offer to visitors. But it should also be a city that offers a good quality of life to its residents.