023_soft economy

The completion of sky train and its extensive network of elevated linkways has brought to us a new way of experiencing the city of Bangkok. It is now possible to do mall hopping without touching the street level at all. More and more shopping malls are opening their doors directly to sky train stations with the same goal in mind, to draw in commuters. Informal biz such as street vendor also benefits from this network as its newly found source of income. As I wrote on post no.006_sky shopping in http://urbanomania-id.blogspot.com, this type of business is usually illegal so the so-called product displays must be able to set up within a few minutes and to disappear within a blink of an eye. The characteristic of this kind of commercial establishment is informal, flexible and formless. Existing urban elements are usually improvised as commercial tools. See another interesting example of contextual product display from Singapore on post no.037_the self-organizing economy in http://urban-o-mania.blogspot.com.