Urban greenspace network design and potential accessibility of the surrounding neighborhood through space syntax analysis: a case study of Rayong Municipality, Thailand

The Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) development is a megaproject, which has occurred under the national development plan as a trigger mechanism topromote the potential of the competitiveness and increase the economic value of Thailand with the significant potential of industry, tourism, and the economy. Rayongis considered as a prospective city in the EEC development plan. Currently, Rayong has many urban development plans gearing up the readiness of the province to becomea part of the EEC’s development, including the development of the old town, renovation of tourist attractions, and development of natural areas that have created many development projects in the cities. These offer a further intersectoral collaboration for urban development. Therefore, this study is part of an internship research project titled "Urban Greenspace Network Design and Evaluating Neighborhood Accessibilitythrough Space Syntax Analysis: A case study of Rayong Municipality, Thailand". The internship research is under the collaboration with Rayong City Development Company (RYCD), the local government which is the Rayong administration, and the educationsector, which is Thammasat Design School of Thammasat University, Thailand to study the Rayong Municipality area to find the advantages and disadvantages so to provide design guidelines for the city’s development. The study consists of two main objectives:1) Urban analysis and design, which emphasize the results of the analysis and publicparticipation, and 2) space syntax analysis to study the changes after the development process. The methodology in the research used the literature review to find thepreliminary data, and a SWOT analysis, TOWS Matrix method, and the public participation process were utilized to find the problem and potential of the municipalityand provided the policies to create a conceptual master plan. The results from the urban analysis by using the SWOT, TOWS Matrix, and problem identification analysesallowed the researcher to find the highest potential area to be used as the design area of the research. Before the design process, the researcher analyzed the area again to find the potential of the area and beneficiaries for the design proposal before undertakingthe master plan and the detailed design. After the design and development processes, the researcher studied the effect of the project’s development by using DepthmapX and QGIS software to do the space syntax analysis method to find the changes in the area before and after the development process and present the results in terms of an axialmap and raster map. The whole research methodology was designed by applying casestudy methodology by using the key features of the public participation process in thepublic participation case study to design the whole method in objective 1 and using theglobal and local integration and connectivity variables from the space syntax case studyto be the criteria of objective 2. For the results, after following the methodology in eachobjective, in terms of the urban analysis, it was found that the accessibility and connectivity in each area between the urban and natural areas was quite low and some areas still lacked connectivity. In terms of the urban design process, after using the space syntax analysis tool to do the urban analysis and evaluate the development, it was found that the area around the mangrove forest and surroundings was suitable to be the development area because most of the area was owned by Rayong Municipality, and this area could create the accessibility and connectivity between the urban space and natural space in the area. After the development, the evaluation showed that thedevelopment of the area made the above design area along Rajbumrung Road have higher accessibility and connectivity and expanded to the mangrove forest area until the residential area below the mangrove forest. Further study for research would include1) study more about the use of urban spaces in Rayong Municipality through sitesurveys and interviews, and 2) collect the land use and building use data to obtain moredetailed results because of the limitations during the research from the situation of COVID-19 that closed many places in Rayong and the researcher was unable to enter the real site. This included the lockdown policy, which the researcher could not really interview the local people.