HAT-LEK COASTAL COMMUNITY

Hat Lek a town in southeastern Thailand, and the location of the southernmost border crossing between Thailand and Cambodia. Hat Lek is the narrowest part of Thailand, at just under 1500 feet across. The coastal location is ideal for fishermen, who have flocked to the community, building additional houses without legal rights, and creating tensions between newly settled fishermen and their families, long-term residents and the local government. Porous City Network has worked within the community to create design solutions to resolve these questions of ownership within the community and ensure that long-term residents are not evicted or forced out of their homes, and new arrivals in the community build on legal land instead of encroaching on unauthorized territory. In addition, the project addresses the degradation of the mangrove forests by restoring these coastal forests that are critical habitat for fish, and stabilize soil to prevent coastline erosion which would further limit the territory of the community. Hat Lek is a model for the Porous City Network, with the idea that the solutions discovered there might be implemented across 7,000 other Thai fishing villages that face threats of displacement. The project addresses issues of undocumented citizenship and is a model or public education, community engagement and advocacy. Kotchakorn Voraakhom, who leads the initiative in Hat Lek, also brings landscape architecture students to engage in the community engagement and advocacy process. 2017 - ongoing
6400 acres
16 feet above sea level