Food shops opened on Banthat Thong Road, a former hub of car spare parts and sport equipment shops. Gentrification has driven up rents and swept out affordable food and a sense of authentic community from the area. Anucha Charoenpo/Bangkok Post

Banthat Thong used to be a neighbourhood, not a concept. You could live here and find everything: restaurants, bookstores, hardware shops, clinics, banks – even a place to have your shirts made. It was one of those streets where life unfolded upstairs and business happened downstairs. Today, it is something else entirely.

Over the past few years, the you-know-who institutional landlord has transformed Banthat Thong into a curated “food street.” Old tenants running small, non-food shops saw their leases end and rents rise beyond reach, their spaces taken over by cafés and themed restaurants. What was once a living neighbourhood has become a commercial strip run by operators who come for profit, not place – leaving little sense of belonging or responsibility.

Yet amid this gentrification and rebranding, the basics have been overlooked: no dumpster areas, no short-term parking for delivery riders, and no affordable food options for those who work along the strip. Trash piles up at night, riders idle along the curb, and low-paid workers struggle to afford lunch in a place that sells nothing but food. A shopping or community mall typically provides a staff canteen and waste facilities, but Banthat Thong, similar in scale and purpose, offers neither.

Banthat Thong’s transformation is not an isolated case. It reflects a broader shift in Bangkok’s urban policy, where tidiness and walkability now define progress. What began as private redevelopment now echoes the city’s walkable streets agenda, showing how state and market visions of order reinforce each other. The same institutional landlord behind Banthat Thong’s renewal is also redeveloping the nearby Chao Mae Tubtim Shrine, raising similar questions about heritage, participation, and community continuity.

In the process, the informal systems that once sustained local life are gradually disappearing. In the name of cleanliness and walkability, small vendors who once offered affordable meals and maintained a form of informal safety through their constant presence have been swept from the pavements. For many workers, meals now cost more and feel farther away. Some vendors moved to the buildings where they live, offering pick-up only, while others rented spaces in formal vending zones beneath expressways, where monthly rent for a four-by-six metre unit can reach 15,000 baht.

The City Administration calls it progress; vendors call it survival. Food quality has not improved, and the new locations raise questions about whether they meet Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s own standards of hygiene and order. Set beneath expressways beside the same pavements vendors once occupied, these vending zones are poorly managed, with uneven concrete floors, inadequate roofing, and exposure to exhaust fumes from traffic below and above. Far from hygienic, these conditions expose food to contamination in multiple ways.

If the city insists on moving vendors off pavements, the alternatives should at least raise –not lower – the standards of hygiene, safety, and livelihood for the people who feed the city. When vendors disappear, so do the lights, sounds, and casual presence that once lent the streets a sense of safety after dark. At night, clean pavements turn empty. You can finally walk freely, but you might not want to. Clean does not always mean safe; sometimes it only means deserted.

The removal of small vending carts, many tucked in narrow alleys, has also reduced food options for taxi drivers and night-shift workers who relied on them. These carts formed a modest but essential urban economy, with meals cooked by those excluded from formal employment and served to those working through the night. The clean-up may look orderly, but it has quietly displaced informal traders and narrowed the city’s after-hours network of survival.

A BMA street cleaner said her work has become easier, with less trash to collect since vendors left – but eating has become harder. She cannot afford meals on Banthat Thong. Behind the street, a small grocery that once served vendors and workers is struggling too, its rent rising as regular customers disappear.

Both transformations – Banthat Thong’s commercial makeover and the city’s broader clean-up – reflect Bangkok’s desire for order and modernity. The intentions are good. But without coordination, both risk leaving behind the people who keep the city running: the cooks, cleaners, couriers, and clerks who make it work.

This is where cooperation could matter. If Bangkok truly aims for cleaner, safer streets, it could also invite landlords–especially institutional ones–to be part of the solution. For Banthat Thong, that means more than restaurants: small gaps between shops for waste collection or rider stops, and perhaps a modest social canteen where workers can afford to eat.

These small steps would not only make Banthat Thong more liveable but also set an example of inclusive urban care, where landlords, tenants and city officials work together in a concerted effort to keep streets both beautiful and humane.

If the city truly wants spotless streets, so be it. But better options must be offered to improve the livelihoods of the working-class people who rely on them. Otherwise, the city will have to work harder to ensure pavements are fairly shared between pedestrians and the people who keep Bangkok moving. Because pavements are not just for walking. They are for living. And a truly liveable city is one where everyone–from the restaurateur to the rider–still has a place at the table.

Sirinya Wattanasukchai is a Bangkok Post columnist.