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The article investigates the technical rationality behind Bangkok's recent land use zoning plans. It does so through the example of Chinatown. The plans, intended to promote urban sustainability, introduce zoning techniques such as (1) land use subcategorization to hierarchize urban districts, and (2) density zoning to encourage intensive development around transit stations. The case of Chinatown foregrounds the discussion in this article, which then, in turn, explores the two zoning techniques. I argue that both techniques are formulated through a functionalist rationality, and thus omit place-specific conditions of land, such as local practices, histories and land tenure. Worse yet, the landed elite uses them to justify displacement and eviction. The article theorizes Chinatown as a space of difference, pointing to particularities that are unseen and thus at risk of being unmade by what is often passed off as technical expertise.

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The article investigates Charoengkrung Creative District as a site of cross-border policy learning. Heralded as Thailand's first creative district and a “prototype” for many more to come, Charoenkrung Creative District promises to rejuvenate the city through a participatory, broad-based approach. Rather than analyzing the creative district as a local intervention, the article foregrounds the transnational character of policymaking. It shows that while the policy intervention is local, it is globally inspired by the imaginaries of “successful” elsewheres. The paper analyzes the state's discourse of creativity as a global–local negotiation, whereby the local understanding of creativity is contingent upon (and therefore curtailed by) its selective perception of foreign successes. Building upon the notion of assemblage, it points to a collage of policy ideas and imaginaries of success, which are mobilized to promote the vision of the creative district at home.