Landscape Planning for an Agricultural Research Center: A Research-by-Design Case Study in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Abstract

Effective planning at the landscape scale is a difficult but crucial task. Modern landscape planning requires economic success, ecological resilience, and environmental justice. Thus, planners and designers must learn to use a deliberative approach in planning: an approach in which decisions are made with the common understanding of stakeholders. This notwithstanding, there is a lack of localized and site-specific design examples for deliberative planning. One of the lacking examples is agricultural research station, which is unique because it balances economic, academic, and public uses. This study used a Research-by-Design Method to explore deliberative planning for an agricultural research station in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Field surveys, interviews, and archival search were conducted for database. Design decisions were delivered via linear-combination suitability analysis. We found that the site was viewed differently by different sets of users. The basic and safety infrastructure was the top priority, and clear direction of governance was crucial to move the site forward in the future. This study was one of the first recorded attempts to design an agricultural research center via the Research-by-Design process. The method and results of the research contribute to the growing body of evidence to support the need of evidence-based design and planning for all sites.