You know you are doing something right when historians and political scientists can't figure out just how many coups you have had over the last century...
thailand is basically an example of a centralized Mandala evolving in full power grappling around all its peripheries as Bangkok is the heart core. other neighboring states are like this too, like Manila in the Philippines, Jakarta in Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Yangon in Myanmar, and Vietnam has both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
@@xXxSkyViperxXx nahh, other cities here in the Philippines have some sort of power to not be as centralized as Bangkok, but almost all the people who has the money from other cities flock to Manila as it has the best universities and job opportunities
Finally, someone is pointing out the "one city problem" that cause struggles in my country! As the Thai citizen, TBH, I agree with all of your opinions as shown in the video. Non-Bangkok city lacks of development is long overdue issue yet no one ever wants or even care to talk about. This needs to change and I hope the protest will deliver it eventually. BTW, I never heard Chaopraya Surasak city before. Did you confuse between the city and the province? Could you give me a reference so I can check it out? Thanks
Data in that chart is a bit... questionable. Pattaya and Chiang Mai's metro areas have 320k and 960k people respectively, but do not show up, while Chaophraya Surasak, a relatively obscure city in Chonburi, does.
I believe the resources would be Wikipedia, try looking there; I read an article about Primate cities just recently and Thailand is definitely there too, so it might be listed in the notes
There's still plenty of stuff to talk about, from China's migrant workers and their protests to the allowing of homosexual couples to be guardians of one another following a poll by the government to China's first Civil Code. I think this was just something they wanted to do for a long time.
@@eugeneng7064 Chinese migrant workers have had the fastest economic development in the world. Plenty of other countries have protests so it's nothing special except to China watchers desperate for schadenfreude.
The fact that the Thai king spends most of his time being lazy in germany seems pretty insulting. The british royalty is useless, too, but at least they spend most of their time in their country.
Brits have the constitutional right to criticize the royal family and the British royal family pays vast amounts of taxes for their estates. The Thai monarchy however... *cough* *cough*
The current king is basically a buffoon who lives to indulge himself, and even seeks more power as king. He's wasting all the public goodwill the previous Thai king had built up over decades (which is why the monarchy wasn't questioned before him).
@@user-tg6vq1kn6v you're just mad french boi. Or you are really gonna hold on to an error because you think he did it from with malicious intent. As if he cares about france.
I’m from Thailand, and I quite agreed with your video. Thailand is too centralized that it breed in-equality. Most of progress are focused on Bangkok, while other cities receive what remains of them. Most of the coups and protests also happen in Bangkok too, so yeah you guess it. Btw., your video was released after there was a demonstration in front of the parliament today regarding the revision of constitution that gave extra privileges and power to the PM. Protesters were sprayed with water and tear gas.
@@organizedchaos4559 I live in the UK's 2nd largest city: Birmingham. Although London is the central hub of the country, it is to some level decentralised. The majority of universities are outside of London (e.g Cambridge, Oxford, Warwick, Birmingham, Durham, Manchester.) Additionally, other cities and councils receive their own funding to promote projects in their own cities. In Birmingham, there is almost always construction of a new building, tracks etc... and most of the country is linked together with trains so it's quite easy to travel to other cities. Finally, keep in mind that the UK and specifically England is quite small, I've lived in London before and some of my teachers from high school lived in neighbouring cities and commuted to London every day for work, I think something like that is quite difficult in Thailand due to geography and lack of good infrastructure between cities.
The Thai King is a very, very strange fellow. A friend of mine in Germany saw him riding a bike in what could only be described as a bikini. Apparently he also made his dog a senior officer in the Thai Airforce!
@@M.M0709 That's the current, recently crowned, king. He's being attacked now because he's always been unpopular. Thais didn't attack their king until he came along cos the previous king was a lot more respected (even revered!), but his successor is anything but.
Am Thai never heard of Chao Praya Surasak before. Also, I think the second-largest city is probably either Chiang Mai metro or Pattaya-Sri Racha metro area.
It's weird to me how little we hear about international news in American media. Especially when you consider how much repetition of the same discussions there is just with different hosts each hour when there have been no updates to a given situation. Even if something doesn't affect us directly it's still more interesting to hear about than the same thing on repeat & maybe hearing more international news would help us think of ourselves as part of a broader community, which would probably be a good thing.
It's very strange to me- John Stewart commented on the '24-hour news cycle' for years, and it always struck me as odd that, if channels were going to commit to having content all day, why not span the globe? There are only so many panels with celebrity guests and local news about animals you can fit into a segment.
I think it's because a lot of news is sensationalised. If there is a particularly interesting global news source - it needs to somehow affect America negatively (perhaps positively? But I've not seen anything like that) for it to gain traction in media: e.g China and how dangerous it is to the USA, Iran and their nuclear programme and how they may threaten the USA, I think there was something about Russia putting a bounty on US soldiers (correct me if I am wrong), Hong Kong and their democracy and how China is evil - bringing it back to my original example. I think all the global news reported in the USA is highly negative and often used to incit fear in the population, because that's what gets the views.
@@10-OSwords I think so too, it's like there is always a group of people that is vilified in the USA every generation. Late 1800s: Migrant Chinese workers WW1 era: Germans WW2 era: Japanese Cold war: Soviets 1980s: Japanese again 2010s/2020s: Chinese
I nearly stopped watching your video when you said Manchester was the UK #2 city (it's Birmingham), but your city statistics are ridiculously wrong for Thailand, so I stopped and wrote this comment instead. Bangkok metropolitan area is indeed the largest city, but the next four cities on your list are utterly completely wrong because you are not including metro areas, as you did with Bangkok. You're only including data which accounts for population inside the official municipality city limits. Just like many cities around the world, Thai cities are sprawling conglomerations of districts, sub-districts and suburbs, often, the city limits were defined hundreds of years ago when these cities were nothing but small villages or kingdoms. What you are doing here is literally no different than saying the population of the City of London is around 8000, when in fact if you include all the adjacent suburban areas, as everyone does, the population of London is roughly 10 million. Just for example I live in Chiang Mai, a city whose urban population is in excess of 1.2 million, which is clearly evident if you spend even just one day here. There's plenty of other cities in Thailand with population over 1 million as well. BTW, I've never even heard of Chaopraya Surasak, your supposedly #2 city in Thailand. Your stats are cherry picked and misleading, so whatever argument you are trying to make is invalid.
Well, you know much better than me as a Thai. Just saying, what he trying to say was basically everything was centered around Bangkok that if something happened in Bangkok, it will effect the entire country and the second largest city was not able to counter balance the change, development, crisis and influence of Bangkok.
In fact he did NOT say the UK, it was listed as "England". And I as a thai completely agree with your statement, my family lives in Chiang Mai/Lampang.
Thailand's geographic and political problem are difficult to explain, but you guys have done a great job for this length of video. There is also a joke here in Thailand as well where some people say that Bangkok is a country of its own because not only that everything is there, but also because people in Bangkok act like they are the center of the universe.
Bangkok’s primate status is historical legacy of the massive cultural paradigm shift that was a reaction to Western Imperialism in Southeast Asia, which was dotted with numerous small city-kingdoms in the mandala system. In that system each city would be under the influence of a more powerful kingdom, but that also made it vulnerable to a technologically more superior invader (the west). The system failed for all major mandala centers from Malaya to the South, the Vietnamese to the east, and the Burmese to the West. So Thai kings went into major reorganization of their remaining tributaries and took away once independent kingdoms under the absolute control of Bangkok, so that all the kingdoms were presented to the West and the redesigned collective memory as a single, strong, Thai Kingdom. The system of control was so absolute that in a sense most people will not be aware of various Thai kingdoms, excepting maybe Lanna since that was one of the last to be included into the redesign (since Lana is historically notorious for shifting allegiances). The last few governments ruling Thailand have been laying down the infrastructure to reverse this, and we have seen the reemergence of the prosperity once independent kingdoms but as new centers of prosperity, so Khon Kean is on the path to becoming the hub for Northeastern Thailand (once parts of the kingdoms of Luangprabang, Vientiane, and Champasak as the centers of mandala hubs). Chiang Mai is the capital of northern Thailand, as it was also the capital of Lanna Kingdom as the center...so its a complicated network. So basically when European saw this patchwork of kingdoms it was easy and up for grabs, but by the time they reached Siam, we managed to forge a new administrative foundation that was based on the Eurocentric understanding of civilization..and it worked, we survived and the system kept on going with subsequent wars following the end of European colonialism. So it’s going to take a while to dismantle all the work put into creating it.
Polymatter probably used “city” to mean Urban Area/Built-up area, in which the Greater Manchester BUA is the second largest in England, West Midlands BUA is a close third. Probably because the city of London is technically only a few thousand people (the square mile area). Though the same list labels Paris’ Urban area as way too small. Edit: Birmingham and Manchester are very close in population size, but the 2011 census puts Manchester ahead, may be different next year (2021 census), who knows. Edit 2: reading other comments, seems polymatter got the cities list very wrong, with multiple people saying the numbers were wrong, some figures were for the area others just the city only (Paris), he probably used Wikipedia for all of it.
@@anentiresleeveoforeos2087 A suburb of Bangkok being the second-largest city in Thailand next to Bangkok proper wouldn't really be very meaningful. Like really, they're pretty much the same thing on a national scale. It's kinda like all the "cities" around Tokyo such as Saitama and Yokohama are technically among the biggest cities in Japan, but they're so close to Tokyo that they're pretty much a continuous "city" and comparisons between Tokyo and Yokohama wouldn't really be as meaningful for looking at Japan as a whole as between Tokyo and Osaka/Kobe. I agree he ought to be consistent with what's being measured though.
@@anentiresleeveoforeos2087 And also how in the same list listed on screen, Paris is shown with only the administrative boundaries whilst London has all of it's metropolitan area ..... There's always things like that in these videos and that irks me
All correct - except for one major error: the second largest city is Chiangmai, who'se current population is around the the 2 million mark. Over the last 10 years it has almost doubled in size through development aimed at chinese business and tourism. I say this as someone who has seen the changes occur through doing business there for the last 26 years,
@@bitterjames da, e trist, dar e adevărat ce zice... nu avem munți sau alte bariere naturale. Totuși, vreau să cred că voința și elita politică, care să facă reformele necesare, poate face o diferență și în cazul nostru. Avem cea mai tare diasporă totuși! :))
Voi sunteți pentru România ceea ce Laos este pentru Thailanda. O țară cu aceeași cultură și limbă (un alt dialect în cazul lor), dar capturată de comuniști.
i live in a village in Germany near the town where the Thai Royal family often go skiing called Garmisch . It's pretty common to see them and their security
As long as I’ve lived in Thailand it’s always been Bangkok first, and then... the rest of the country. Like living in two realities. You have areas like the NE region of Issan which touch Laos and Naratiwat in the deep south on the Malaysian border that are so distant and isolated (physically and culturally) that they seem barely part of the same country. When government decisions are made in Bangkok, these outer regions are rarely considered or recognized. When laws are made they are made mostly to refect whatever is going on in the capital city, but also are imposed on the hinterlands, which are often un-applicable and un-tailored to such poor rural areas, are are often quite damaging. One size doesnt not fit all.
As a Thai citizen, Bangkokians born & raise, this just hits too close to home. Wealth, education, and opportunity inequality is a serious issue in our country that can never be fix with constant coup and unstable government. Our country has always force citizens to see politics as polarizing and side picking based on your loyalty (monarchy lover vs. rebels). It has rarely been about who has the best solution, which is why most of these coups feel aimless and unstainable in the long run.
He was going off the metro areas where Manchester is bigger, Manchester also has a bigger urban area than Birmingham. If he used the metric where Birmingham has 1.1m and Manchester 500k Birmingham would be larger than London as both the London and Manchester urban areas are made up of multiple smaller "cities" that and physically and economically act as one city.
@@Jgvcfguy So does Birmingham, Tipton, Solihull, Wednesbury, Oldbury, Sutton Coldfield, Walsall & others are all commuter towns/districts that act as satellite centres for Birmingham even places as far south as Bromsgrove & Redditch do too
The problem with thailand it self are largely due to it history.Back in the day when the country are still called siam it was a superdecentralized state that compete within it self the thai calling this phenomenol "candle state" where the most powerful city shine and become majorhub of an entire region.Now the problem with this is happening during 1800s bangkok or siam are represented as the leader in the region with city nearby city pay tithe to bangkok while bangkok it self having nearly no tie with it surrounding when the fench and british arrive and colonize it's neighbor and carving out border. Bangkok it self are afraid of losing influnce over city. Trying to centralize and exert it authority by sending a bunch of high class noble in bangkok to outer city to "disguise" as under thai authority after the border has been drew they just go back to bangkok and call it a day.
Chao Phraya river basin cover the heartland of Thailand and Bangkok lies at the end. Like New Orleans being the control point of the Mississippi. Yeah He didnt explain it
The heart of Thailand basins comprised of multiple rivers. With tight control over the basin, you could control the trade route and thus the economy of the region - but did to the fact that it is multiple rivers and wide basin - the region is always under controlled freak who centralized everything under one city state (like mini china) Colonialism is just another nail in the coffin, the centralizing is drilled into every part of policy and military thinking - even language.
Your channel is by far the one most capable of satiating my thirst for general knowledge with a vocabulary and dynamism suitable to the level of knowledge I have acquired from years of Wikipedia and other UA-cam science channels.
Great presentation, I think you! However, as an expat who has lived inside the Kingdom of Thailand for over 27 years now, some of your figures are incorrect regarding population. For example, Nakon Ratchisima, Udon Thani and even Khon Kean are all well over 1,000,000 in population in 2020. When I first came to the Kingdom in 1990, I was told that the population of Thailand was 70,000,000......and people are still being told the very same figure today, incorrectly!!! SO its easy to understand how the numbers you found and quoted are incorrect. And the size of Bangkok is continually perpetuated by the fact that there is seemingly (although not recently) always work to be had for those on the bottom of the economic ladder. Village people are so terribly left out of the "thriving economy" even in the best of times......so those who find themselves sick and tired of their grueling life as village peasants.....will flood into Bangkok in hopes of earning a decent living by working in a factory etc. etc.! Minimum wage is around $10 per DAY.....and its surely no accident that its calculated that way as opposed to by THE HOUR! Culturally ignorant villagers will often find themselves in a place where "one day" means 10 hours of labor or more! Exploitation of uneducated, unskilled laborers are common here as it most places around the world! Fortunately, villagers are a very persistent and difficult to beat down to severely! Village live is often FANTASTIC for young children, where they are loved by everyone, known to everyone and protected by everyone! Hence, these lovely village children have infinitely more FREEDOM in their village surroundings.....then children in "highly civilized" societies! Youngsters as young as 2 years old will have the run of the entire village areas! and are never lost of harmed in any way! Having been brought up in the upper middle class environment of Marin County, California.....I would much rather be born in one of the many, many poor but economically stable Thai Villages......than ANYWHERE in the USA!!! The old saying "it takes a whole village to raise one child" is very true...and the USA doesn't have any villages anymore.....Greenwich Village doesn't really count as a real "village" in anthropological terms! Thanks for sharing!!! D
Just a correction, if you base population of Bangkok on metro then you should do that with the other cities as well, otherwise Bangkok's population would be around 5,1 million. Nakhon Ratchasima, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani (where I live), Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Buriram, Chaiyaphum, Chonburi, Nakhon Sawan, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Petchabun, Roi-Et, Sakon Nakhon, Samut Prakan, Sisaket, Songkhla, Surat Thani, Surin and Ubon Ratchathani all have a population of over 1 million. While they officially go under provinces, they're all also widely considered one city (with the exception of some tourist cities/islands), even in governments. For instance, I live in a district 20 minutes outside of Udon Thani that has a population of roughly 70,000, yet we're all considering it as part of main Udon Thani, but outside city center. Changwat is Province, Mueang is city center, Amphoe is district, Tambon is sub-districts and Muban is villages. There are a few others as well. On paper this seems very much alike how we divide areas in the west, however they function differently, the people's view of subdivision levels are very different, and people live very differently as well, compared to say Norway where I'm from. Another thing to mention is a large percentage of Bangkok's population and tourist areas are filled with workers from North and especially from Northeast. This makes up around 15-20 million, especially noticeable it would be in cities like Udon Thani (1,5 million) where the actual population is more closer to 5 million, if not more, if everyone was to go home at the same time. An example would be now during the pandemic Pattaya, Phuket, tourist islands and other places with foreign tourists, are now next to empty and most of these workers and business owners have now gone back home to North and Northeast. On the flip side, the real number of people currently residing in the Greater Bangkok Metropolitan area, if you include the unregistered, all Thai workers, migrant workers and longterm stayers would it be between 20-25 million.
So this started an interesting little point I found. Most statistical agencies do indeed report Birmingham as having the 2nd largest population of any city in the UK; apart from "Demographia" in their 2020 report "Demographia World Urban Areas 16th Annual Edition" There they get the numbers that Polymatter shows here roughly, with London having 10,979,000 and Manchester having 2,727,000; numbers which I had thought were odd to begin with. Demographia counts by inhabitants in the wider urban area; that is the extent of the city even beyond its municipal lines, ie the "built up area" which is an interesting stat to use. Overall it's an interesting little rabbit hole of statistics to go down.
Thank you so much for shining light onto my country. Politics here has been incredibly frustrating for my entire life and with Covid it only gets worse. I wish more people would see and understand Thailand’s internal struggles.
Very good point. This is the first time I've seen foreigner point out this issue. Basically it has been rural peoples elect governments and Bangkokians depose their governments while Bangkok hold half of resource and budget of country despite being 1/7 of population. Moreover Bangkokians have mindset like, rural peoples (especially northern part and isaan region) are uneducated that's why democracy doesn't work in Thailand and those peoples aren't capable for elect government that's why we have to supporting coup by military junta. This is main narrative that was use in 2014 coup. However new generation Bangkokians have opposite attitude tho, as you can see most of peoples right now is switch to pro-democracy.
One small note regarding Seoul's primacy ratio: The city itself has been shrinking for years and now has just about 10 million people. The average price of an apartment in Seoul is now right around $1 million. But just looking at the city, itself, doesn't really tell the story. Draw a circle around Seoul with a 50-kilometer radius. You've just circled half the population of the entire country, around 25 million people.
As a Thai person. Thank you for talking about the protest in my country and spread how bad Thai Mornacy is and the law to the world. and if you read this. please please please help spread the news in the hashtag #WhatHappeningInThailand and help Thai people take Democracy back.
Sometimes I'm in awe of Thailand that despite its coups and alternating between democratic governments and military rule, it's still able to maintain a fairly decent economy with viable agricultural, manufacturing and tourism sectors.
I think that one thing that it has going for it is hard-drive manufacturing, but it also relies too heavily on tourism so it may be in more trouble than spain, for example
While having coups every 8 years doesn’t exactly help with stability note I am not criticizing the Thai government or the monarchy so please do not take this the wrong way
Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated? I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else. Gets me frustrated. Just admit that you love the videos I make, my dear jos
Although primacy itself is lesser in South Korea than in Thailand, Seoul is still problematically big in other metrics. The Bangkok metropolitan area has a population of 11 million out of all 69 million Thai people. The Seoul metropolitan area has a population of 26 million out of all 51 million South Korean people. That’s more than HALF of all South Koreans living in or around Seoul, and we’re not even a city-state like Singapore. We’re 2.5 times larger than the Netherlands.
"Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments. Geographers explore both the physical properties of Earth's surface and the human societies spread across it." I am not sure if the problem presented in this video could be called "geography."
I love it when a seemingly complex political issue can be brought down to something seemingly unrelated like this. I was part of a debate in my high school about the state of Venezuela and whether or not to impose sanctions. Initially, it seemed like such a complex political issue that could never really be understood but as I looked closer and boiled things down more and more I realized there was really a simple factor at play, an invisible hand pulling on the strings of all democracies worldwide, natural resources. In essence, a country with abundant natural resources does not need productivity from its people, so there is no point investing in providing people with a fair comfortable life. All you need to do is acquire that natural resource. This is why places, where the main industry is something like diamonds or oil, is almost always a terrible place to live. That is really what happened in Venezuela, they switched the economy from human resources to oil and that bred the environment necessary for a dictatorship. So the only way to reverse that effect would be to make sure that oil was no longer a profitable business, ie. sanctions.
Just a little point- Birmingham is the UKs 2nd city, not Manchester- 1,020,589 vs 430,818 Even if you stretch it out to "urban area" you get this- London - 8,960,000 Birmingham-Wolverhampton - 2,930,00 Manchester - 2,840,000
I last been to Bangkok 15 months ago. It was pretty nice. Would recommend shopping there, not just in Bangkok proper, but also in a floating market. I suddenly miss Thailand a bit.
This video missed out one very important and overriding point: the roles and influences of military in Thailand political and government system which this video did not mentioned at all.
I am an avid devotee of this channel, *and* of Wendover Productions, and it's rare that the working premises of the two are brought into such steep and swift collision. According to Wendover -- and credibly, it must be said -- city-size ratios within a country are conspicuously *not* dependent on country-specific factors. Rather they follow a predictable log-scale, with the second largest city in a country "always" being roughly half as big as the largest, and the third largest city being a third as big as the largest, and so-on.
A country where the Monarch lives in Bavaria and a country that has lots of coups in the last 100 years, Thailand I must say you are more interesting than the Philippines
@@msgpatient7850 actually, not so much, indonesia is not as centralized and actively decentralize, especially with current administration that build a lot of infrastructure outside java.
@@msgpatient7850 yeah you're right, but there are also a lot of big cities outside of sumatra and java, like Balikpapan,Makassar,Ambon and even Jayapura.
Since when has Russia been protected from attack? They are the quintessential example of a country famously lacking natural defenses. Case in point: they've been invaded loads of times: the polish, the Swedish, the mongols, the British and French etc
To both of those comments I say: id easily take mountains or coastlines as natural defenses any day over sheer size. Russia has had to resort to the strategy of defense in depth again and again. Because it has no other choice. It always has to let half its country burn before its able to exhaust and repel an attacker. So every victory is a pyrrhic victory. I'd consider it quite a stretch to call that 'natural defenses'
@@Kevin-cm5kc You can understand what they meant though, even if it destroys Russia its nearly impossible for an outside force to take over Russia due to its sheer size
The title is correct but for some years one main reason is China's Belt and Road initiative. It goes through Thailand and connects Indonesia. It is extremely beneficial for those countries but at the same time adverse for some western powers. The same western powers that finance "protesters" in Hong Kong.
I think, in your very well thought out presentation, you may have mistakenly left out the supremely top-heavy military and the role that they play in politics.
as a person who lived, studied and worked almost 7 years in Bangkok, with my educational background in Economics and Finnance, I partially agree with this video. Thailand economy is based on 4 major points : 1. Tourism 2. Agriculture 3. Export 4. Foreign Investment for a country which Agriculture is a key pillar in its economy, saving lands for agriculture is more important than growing the urban areas. so it explains why Thailand cities are much smaller than the Capital city. saving the land for agriculture or tourism purpose rather than growing the cities. the main cause of instability is lack of powerful democratic institutions in the country and traditional system of building everything around monarchy. First of all Political parties need to show their Loyalty to the king and then despite the king and his family are very humble, nice and generous, people who are connected to the Royal family have too much power ans use it for their own interest. There must be a key factor to study in political science as the effect of neighboring countries in political stability of a country. Examples of Turkey, Thailand and some African countries.
4:48 "Far more than second place Manchester" Really Birmingham is far larger than Manchester, just the government poorly defines where cities end. Birmingham's metro population is ~4.3 million, while Manchester's is ~3.3 million.
Exactly! And if we cherrypick our population data, like he did in his video, we could use the mteropolitan area data. 2,8 Million people for vienna, wich results in a whopping 9,8 ratio.... Maybe Austria is the most centralized country in europe?
For those who point out that the population data shown in this video isn't accurate, in my opinion, I think he is correct in showing Bangkok population including all the metropolitan area which included Samut Prakan, Samut Sakjon, Nakhon Pathom, Nonthaburi, and Pathum Thani as they are but a single city in real life (no rural area in between them). In provincial area it's a different story, outside of city municipality are vast rural area which can't consider the population live in those rural area as a population of a single city so we can't consider province's population as city's population. So if we talk about city population the city of Nakhon Ratchasima it will have registered population at only 126,391 people (according to wikipedia in 2019) even if we include all of the district which the city placed it still have population only 466,848, and much of Mueng Nakhon Ratchasima district is rural area. In case of Chiang Mai as a city, from official map the Chiang Mai city Municipality included almost all of the city area and have population only at 127,240. So his point still isn't wrong. Maybe he is wrong about the city of Chaophraya Surasak as it's one of the city municipality in an actual city area far larger that span the entire west coast of Chonburi like a megalopolis with population around a million but they're still 10x less population than Bangkok metropolis. So anyway, I still think the point of this video is correct, Bangkok is too big and too important considering population alone, let alone many factor he mentions such as all the headquarter of anything "National" is in Bangkok, all the decision have been made here, so if anyone can control it it's the same as control the entire country. I don't think anyone can defile that as it's happen so many time up until now. Also, it's one of the factor that make any implementation of any policy or public service slow, very slow in fact, as everything to be done anywhere in the country must have been approve by central government first and amount of paperworks in order to make anything be done in this country are atrocious. (I think I didn't use wrong word for that)
Would love to know how you decided to draw the boundaries for the cities for Thailand. So far it seems slightly arbitrary: - The only two "cities" (or province) here is Udon Thani and Nakhon Ratchasima - Yes, Bangkok is also a province but you included 5 other neighboring provinces in there - Hat Yai is actually a district in a province called Song Kla - I don't know where Chaophraya Surasak is lol. It's definitely not a province though You could probably make the same point regardless though. The number would just be different than 26x.
4:54 This graph is incorrect, it represents Cairo as 9 million because it doesn't count the greater Cairo metropolitan area which crosses provincial borders between Giza, Cairo and Qalyubia. If the population in the total metropolitan area regardless of provincial borders is counted it would equal roughly 20.9 million and Alexandria would remain the same 2nd place at 5.2 million. However, Cairo's 20.9:5 .2 (~4:1) still is way less drastic than Bangkok's 10:0.38 (~26:1).
Japan's geography can be like this as well. The Tokyo metropolitan area has the population of Canada. It's only Kyoto's status as a historical capital that keeps several institutions in place as well as being a joint Metro area with Osaka not unlike Dallas-Fort Worth for my American friends.
as a hong konger, i fully support the thai people and there want for democracy, its truly an amazing thing that i hope one day every country can achieve
I wanted to highlight that Paris urbain area (Île de France) is 12.2m inhabitants and you should not count the 2.4m inhabitants of the Paris "intra muros" area. Which means that Paris and Bangkok are more less as much centralized. Maybe there are other reasons for a coup than just the centralisation of the population in the capital which seems to be working well for France
05:23 Chiang Mai is actually Thailand's second-biggest and well know city but to make his point, he conveniently leaves it out. This is why I take everything I see or hear with a grain of salt.
You know you are doing something right when historians and political scientists can't figure out just how many coups you have had over the last century...
Wow your channel is also amazing , and your point is true and it’s very sad
couldn't have been more true.
If by ‘right’ you mean cause chaos then yes
Notice me, Senpai!
How's it going, mate?
So Thailand is basically a city state with a country. Singapore +
Singapore Pro Max Ultra 5G
Monaco: hold my beer
singapore with more land and more political instability lol
thailand is basically an example of a centralized Mandala evolving in full power grappling around all its peripheries as Bangkok is the heart core. other neighboring states are like this too, like Manila in the Philippines, Jakarta in Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Yangon in Myanmar, and Vietnam has both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
@@xXxSkyViperxXx nahh, other cities here in the Philippines have some sort of power to not be as centralized as Bangkok, but almost all the people who has the money from other cities flock to Manila as it has the best universities and job opportunities
Finally, someone is pointing out the "one city problem" that cause struggles in my country!
As the Thai citizen, TBH, I agree with all of your opinions as shown in the video. Non-Bangkok city lacks of development is long overdue issue yet no one ever wants or even care to talk about. This needs to change and I hope the protest will deliver it eventually.
BTW, I never heard Chaopraya Surasak city before. Did you confuse between the city and the province? Could you give me a reference so I can check it out? Thanks
Data in that chart is a bit... questionable. Pattaya and Chiang Mai's metro areas have 320k and 960k people respectively, but do not show up, while Chaophraya Surasak, a relatively obscure city in Chonburi, does.
I was thinking the same thing: Where the hell is Chiang Mai?
@@MrB10N1CLE Chiang Mai city area has only 240k people. Not to mention Pattaya with 190k people.
@@MrB10N1CLE
If you ask where, Chiang Mai is far in the northern part of Thailand
I believe the resources would be Wikipedia, try looking there; I read an article about Primate cities just recently and Thailand is definitely there too, so it might be listed in the notes
Polymatter is running out of china videos. He is moving on to other countries.
There's still plenty of stuff to talk about, from China's migrant workers and their protests to the allowing of homosexual couples to be guardians of one another following a poll by the government to China's first Civil Code. I think this was just something they wanted to do for a long time.
😂
Stale joke
@@guna14146 things are going south for China videos
@@eugeneng7064 Chinese migrant workers have had the fastest economic development in the world. Plenty of other countries have protests so it's nothing special except to China watchers desperate for schadenfreude.
Why is the king of Thailand living in another country full time? That is I don't understand.
Not sure, just a very random guess but maybe cause of all the coups?
Seems insulting that he takes their money but doesnt even want to live in their country.
He loves vacation. What else is he gonna do with his time?
@@StarChildInABubble Doing public relations stuff so the people like him and dont just see him as a giant waste of money maybe?
Because who doesn't love Germany (except Poland)?
The fact that the Thai king spends most of his time being lazy in germany seems pretty insulting. The british royalty is useless, too, but at least they spend most of their time in their country.
Maybe it’s because of all the coups attempted ;-;
Brits have the constitutional right to criticize the royal family and the British royal family pays vast amounts of taxes for their estates. The Thai monarchy however... *cough* *cough*
The current king is basically a buffoon who lives to indulge himself, and even seeks more power as king. He's wasting all the public goodwill the previous Thai king had built up over decades (which is why the monarchy wasn't questioned before him).
He obviously prefers Sauerkraut over Pad Thai, LoL...🤣🤣
Your royals are now reality shiw starlets with zero class.
Rule of Thumb: Never put all of your eggs in one basket.
I hope NY learns this lesson, Albany, Yonkers ,and buffalo have potential
Lol naw nyc needs to be its own state. The rest of ny is sad
State of NY has leave the comments section
@Jarrod Yuki Thailand: Ok
@Jarrod Yuki What???
You should have used Paris metro area, not Paris administrative borders. Then it's supermacy over the rest of France would be much more obvious.
ah but the french countryside speaks for itself
and yet he uses metro area for Bangkok. So inconsistent!
Would you consider the entire Ile-de-France as Paris metro?
@@user-tg6vq1kn6v you're just mad french boi. Or you are really gonna hold on to an error because you think he did it from with malicious intent. As if he cares about france.
The primacy ratio of Paris would still be irrelavant to the primacy ratio of Bangkok
2:28 “take away all human generated data”
the guy who made the map: 😳
Haha good one
Nice
+1
@@prateepphonjanthuek4904 what
@@prateepphonjanthuek4904 what are you talking about
I’m from Thailand, and I quite agreed with your video. Thailand is too centralized that it breed in-equality. Most of progress are focused on Bangkok, while other cities receive what remains of them. Most of the coups and protests also happen in Bangkok too, so yeah you guess it. Btw., your video was released after there was a demonstration in front of the parliament today regarding the revision of constitution that gave extra privileges and power to the PM. Protesters were sprayed with water and tear gas.
Are the protests aimed at parliament or monarchy?
But I don't see why isn't this a problem with other countries like England or South Korea or Bangladesh?
@@organizedchaos4559 I live in the UK's 2nd largest city: Birmingham. Although London is the central hub of the country, it is to some level decentralised. The majority of universities are outside of London (e.g Cambridge, Oxford, Warwick, Birmingham, Durham, Manchester.) Additionally, other cities and councils receive their own funding to promote projects in their own cities. In Birmingham, there is almost always construction of a new building, tracks etc... and most of the country is linked together with trains so it's quite easy to travel to other cities. Finally, keep in mind that the UK and specifically England is quite small, I've lived in London before and some of my teachers from high school lived in neighbouring cities and commuted to London every day for work, I think something like that is quite difficult in Thailand due to geography and lack of good infrastructure between cities.
@@organizedchaos4559 well...over here the monarch is unchecked and unquestionable.
@@organizedchaos4559 didn't know that south Korea & Bangladesh have royalty ?
Everyone, let's roast the Thai king, they can't arrest us all.
The Thai King is a very, very strange fellow. A friend of mine in Germany saw him riding a bike in what could only be described as a bikini. Apparently he also made his dog a senior officer in the Thai Airforce!
No thanks... I would prefer not to spend half my life in prison!
im scared to like... jeez
Thai king looks like as if he shat his pants and is too afraid to tell anyone about it.
@@M.M0709 That's the current, recently crowned, king. He's being attacked now because he's always been unpopular. Thais didn't attack their king until he came along cos the previous king was a lot more respected (even revered!), but his successor is anything but.
Am Thai never heard of Chao Praya Surasak before. Also, I think the second-largest city is probably either Chiang Mai metro or Pattaya-Sri Racha metro area.
Korat is only at 466k still
เจ้าพระยาสุรศักดิ์เป็นเทศบาลนครในจังหวัดชลบุรีครับ หาดู
เชาวัดที่เขตเมือง ไม่ใช่จังหวัด กรุงเทพและปริมณฑลเป็นเขตเมืองทั้งหมดเลย แต่โคราชและเชียงใหม่เป็นเขตเมืองแค่อ.เมือง
960,000 metro.
Chiang Mai only has 127,240 (2019) population, whereas only 119,532 (2019) population in Pattaya, check it out.
It's weird to me how little we hear about international news in American media. Especially when you consider how much repetition of the same discussions there is just with different hosts each hour when there have been no updates to a given situation. Even if something doesn't affect us directly it's still more interesting to hear about than the same thing on repeat & maybe hearing more international news would help us think of ourselves as part of a broader community, which would probably be a good thing.
It's very strange to me- John Stewart commented on the '24-hour news cycle' for years, and it always struck me as odd that, if channels were going to commit to having content all day, why not span the globe?
There are only so many panels with celebrity guests and local news about animals you can fit into a segment.
@@LancesArmorStriking Fully agree.
I think it's because a lot of news is sensationalised. If there is a particularly interesting global news source - it needs to somehow affect America negatively (perhaps positively? But I've not seen anything like that) for it to gain traction in media: e.g China and how dangerous it is to the USA, Iran and their nuclear programme and how they may threaten the USA, I think there was something about Russia putting a bounty on US soldiers (correct me if I am wrong), Hong Kong and their democracy and how China is evil - bringing it back to my original example. I think all the global news reported in the USA is highly negative and often used to incit fear in the population, because that's what gets the views.
@@KHANSTER1029 Constant international fear distracts from how bad of a job our own govt. is doing.
@@10-OSwords I think so too, it's like there is always a group of people that is vilified in the USA every generation.
Late 1800s: Migrant Chinese workers
WW1 era: Germans
WW2 era: Japanese
Cold war: Soviets
1980s: Japanese again
2010s/2020s: Chinese
I nearly stopped watching your video when you said Manchester was the UK #2 city (it's Birmingham), but your city statistics are ridiculously wrong for Thailand, so I stopped and wrote this comment instead. Bangkok metropolitan area is indeed the largest city, but the next four cities on your list are utterly completely wrong because you are not including metro areas, as you did with Bangkok.
You're only including data which accounts for population inside the official municipality city limits. Just like many cities around the world, Thai cities are sprawling conglomerations of districts, sub-districts and suburbs, often, the city limits were defined hundreds of years ago when these cities were nothing but small villages or kingdoms. What you are doing here is literally no different than saying the population of the City of London is around 8000, when in fact if you include all the adjacent suburban areas, as everyone does, the population of London is roughly 10 million.
Just for example I live in Chiang Mai, a city whose urban population is in excess of 1.2 million, which is clearly evident if you spend even just one day here. There's plenty of other cities in Thailand with population over 1 million as well. BTW, I've never even heard of Chaopraya Surasak, your supposedly #2 city in Thailand. Your stats are cherry picked and misleading, so whatever argument you are trying to make is invalid.
Well, you know much better than me as a Thai. Just saying, what he trying to say was basically everything was centered around Bangkok that if something happened in Bangkok, it will effect the entire country and the second largest city was not able to counter balance the change, development, crisis and influence of Bangkok.
In fact he did NOT say the UK, it was listed as "England". And I as a thai completely agree with your statement, my family lives in Chiang Mai/Lampang.
Manchester's marginally bigger than Birmingham. Arguing either way is extremely pedantic, though.
Technically thats true but it makes little difference to the point - the economic dominance of the capital is common in many countries.
Thailand's geographic and political problem are difficult to explain, but you guys have done a great job for this length of video. There is also a joke here in Thailand as well where some people say that Bangkok is a country of its own because not only that everything is there, but also because people in Bangkok act like they are the center of the universe.
Bangkok’s primate status is historical legacy of the massive cultural paradigm shift that was a reaction to Western Imperialism in Southeast Asia, which was dotted with numerous small city-kingdoms in the mandala system. In that system each city would be under the influence of a more powerful kingdom, but that also made it vulnerable to a technologically more superior invader (the west). The system failed for all major mandala centers from Malaya to the South, the Vietnamese to the east, and the Burmese to the West. So Thai kings went into major reorganization of their remaining tributaries and took away once independent kingdoms under the absolute control of Bangkok, so that all the kingdoms were presented to the West and the redesigned collective memory as a single, strong, Thai Kingdom. The system of control was so absolute that in a sense most people will not be aware of various Thai kingdoms, excepting maybe Lanna since that was one of the last to be included into the redesign (since Lana is historically notorious for shifting allegiances). The last few governments ruling Thailand have been laying down the infrastructure to reverse this, and we have seen the reemergence of the prosperity once independent kingdoms but as new centers of prosperity, so Khon Kean is on the path to becoming the hub for Northeastern Thailand (once parts of the kingdoms of Luangprabang, Vientiane, and Champasak as the centers of mandala hubs). Chiang Mai is the capital of northern Thailand, as it was also the capital of Lanna Kingdom as the center...so its a complicated network.
So basically when European saw this patchwork of kingdoms it was easy and up for grabs, but by the time they reached Siam, we managed to forge a new administrative foundation that was based on the Eurocentric understanding of civilization..and it worked, we survived and the system kept on going with subsequent wars following the end of European colonialism. So it’s going to take a while to dismantle all the work put into creating it.
Great analysis my friend!!!!
Lana? Is Del Rey the singer or Wachowski? lol
@@tthesweetestsinn lol I didn’t catch the spelling mistake, thanks for pointing it out. Much appreciated.
The second largest City in England is not Manchester its Brimingham. Might wanna pin this to stop everyone else from the UK commenting the same thing!
I was just about to comment the same thing! The Greater Birmingham area has 4.3 million people, waaaay more than Greater Manchester
@@letoatreides5165 in an informational video giving wrong information is the worst thing you can do it’s the only thing you can’t do
Why would he pin a comment with a mistake in it? I don’t think Brimingham is the 2nd largest English city.
Lol
@@jttg it is, by far bigger than Manchester.
My main take away: mayor of Beijing rules over more people than most countries' supreme leaders.
Yet it's only the 3rd largest city in China...
The only information you're sending out is that you have no clue how politics work in China
Small point -> Birmingham is the UK 2nd biggest city not Manchester
Polymatter probably used “city” to mean Urban Area/Built-up area, in which the Greater Manchester BUA is the second largest in England, West Midlands BUA is a close third. Probably because the city of London is technically only a few thousand people (the square mile area).
Though the same list labels Paris’ Urban area as way too small.
Edit: Birmingham and Manchester are very close in population size, but the 2011 census puts Manchester ahead, may be different next year (2021 census), who knows.
Edit 2: reading other comments, seems polymatter got the cities list very wrong, with multiple people saying the numbers were wrong, some figures were for the area others just the city only (Paris), he probably used Wikipedia for all of it.
I didn't know where Birmingham is until I seriouly looked at a map of the UK, cuz there are so many Birminghams
@@windywendi I thought Birmingham was in Alabama
@@AdiposeExpress It is. Not the original Birmingham tho
@@AdiposeExpress I currently go to uni close to Washington...UK. A lot of American names come directly from the UK xD
as a thai person, i can say this, *i see people wearing tanjiro's outfit EVERY WHERE-*
exactly, i was at the certain mall in phrom phrong and saw aroumd 5 people cosplaying demon slayer characters lol
cultured people lol
Yeah and that’s the result of letting younger kids watch demon slayer
greetings from japan 🇯🇵
It all makes sense now, Muzan Kibutsuji holds the real power in Thailand and the Demon Slayers came to help the Thai people
These largest city figures aren't very relevant because they represent city limits rather than urban area. It makes comparisons completely arbitrary.
He also follows those up by switching to the metropolitian area for Bangkok instead of the city proper. Very forced.
@@anentiresleeveoforeos2087 A suburb of Bangkok being the second-largest city in Thailand next to Bangkok proper wouldn't really be very meaningful. Like really, they're pretty much the same thing on a national scale. It's kinda like all the "cities" around Tokyo such as Saitama and Yokohama are technically among the biggest cities in Japan, but they're so close to Tokyo that they're pretty much a continuous "city" and comparisons between Tokyo and Yokohama wouldn't really be as meaningful for looking at Japan as a whole as between Tokyo and Osaka/Kobe. I agree he ought to be consistent with what's being measured though.
@@anentiresleeveoforeos2087 And also how in the same list listed on screen, Paris is shown with only the administrative boundaries whilst London has all of it's metropolitan area .....
There's always things like that in these videos and that irks me
World: Geography
Polymatter: Free real estate
Wendover: Planes!
RealLifeLore: unite countries
All correct - except for one major error: the second largest city is Chiangmai, who'se current population is around the the 2 million mark. Over the last 10 years it has almost doubled in size through development aimed at chinese business and tourism. I say this as someone who has seen the changes occur through doing business there for the last 26 years,
Yes and Birmingham is the UK's second largest city, Manchester City is only about 5th by Population...
The entire province is 2 millions but it also includes a lot of rural land. The city itself only has about 120k people.
I’m from Moldova and that comparison was surprisingly unexpected! 🇲🇩
mda, oleacă trist să-ți vezi țara ca un exemplu de "țară slab geografic" dar ce-i drept îi drept.
@@bitterjames da, e trist, dar e adevărat ce zice... nu avem munți sau alte bariere naturale. Totuși, vreau să cred că voința și elita politică, care să facă reformele necesare, poate face o diferență și în cazul nostru. Avem cea mai tare diasporă totuși! :))
Voi sunteți pentru România ceea ce Laos este pentru Thailanda. O țară cu aceeași cultură și limbă (un alt dialect în cazul lor), dar capturată de comuniști.
Yeah, everything is in Bangkok.
If some general want to take over, just take over Bangkok, everything is here.
Agree in Malaysia too,they put everything in Kuala Lumpur.
@@president2887 Not really. At least, our development is spreaded across the country in Penang and Johor.
@Natdhanai Adulyteerakij Hua HIn has less than 80,000 people.
@@president2887 bana kau, check balik
i live in a village in Germany near the town where the Thai Royal family often go skiing called Garmisch . It's pretty common to see them and their security
As long as I’ve lived in Thailand it’s always been Bangkok first, and then... the rest of the country. Like living in two realities. You have areas like the NE region of Issan which touch Laos and Naratiwat in the deep south on the Malaysian border that are so distant and isolated (physically and culturally) that they seem barely part of the same country. When government decisions are made in Bangkok, these outer regions are rarely considered or recognized. When laws are made they are made mostly to refect whatever is going on in the capital city, but also are imposed on the hinterlands, which are often un-applicable and un-tailored to such poor rural areas, are are often quite damaging. One size doesnt not fit all.
This isn't helped by how the local governments have no local autonomy. Everything has to be top down.
As a Thai citizen, Bangkokians born & raise, this just hits too close to home. Wealth, education, and opportunity inequality is a serious issue in our country that can never be fix with constant coup and unstable government. Our country has always force citizens to see politics as polarizing and side picking based on your loyalty (monarchy lover vs. rebels). It has rarely been about who has the best solution, which is why most of these coups feel aimless and unstainable in the long run.
the rise of communism will make world better
Who else is watching from Thailand 😀🇹🇭
all Thais leave a mark here before this video got blocked.
|||
meๆๆ
me me
From Chon buri
interesting that Australia's geography has essential given it two primate cities, in both Sydney and Melbourne which are very close in size.
In primate cities, there's lot of monkey business.
Small error Birmingham is the second biggest city in the UK not Manchester.
Manchester:553,000
Birmingham:1.1million
I believe he was looking at total urban area, not just the inner city
He was going off the metro areas where Manchester is bigger, Manchester also has a bigger urban area than Birmingham. If he used the metric where Birmingham has 1.1m and Manchester 500k Birmingham would be larger than London as both the London and Manchester urban areas are made up of multiple smaller "cities" that and physically and economically act as one city.
@@Jgvcfguy So does Birmingham, Tipton, Solihull, Wednesbury, Oldbury, Sutton Coldfield, Walsall & others are all commuter towns/districts that act as satellite centres for Birmingham even places as far south as Bromsgrove & Redditch do too
it really all depends on how you look at it
The problem with thailand it self are largely due to it history.Back in the day when the country are still called siam it was a superdecentralized state that compete within it self the thai calling this phenomenol "candle state" where the most powerful city shine and become majorhub of an entire region.Now the problem with this is happening during 1800s bangkok or siam are represented as the leader in the region with city nearby city pay tithe to bangkok while bangkok it self having nearly no tie with it surrounding when the fench and british arrive and colonize it's neighbor and carving out border. Bangkok it self are afraid of losing influnce over city. Trying to centralize and exert it authority by sending a bunch of high class noble in bangkok to outer city to "disguise" as under thai authority after the border has been drew they just go back to bangkok and call it a day.
I am still looking for an explanation of - how geography triggered this.
Chao Phraya river basin cover the heartland of Thailand and Bangkok lies at the end. Like New Orleans being the control point of the Mississippi. Yeah He didnt explain it
The heart of Thailand basins comprised of multiple rivers. With tight control over the basin, you could control the trade route and thus the economy of the region - but did to the fact that it is multiple rivers and wide basin - the region is always under controlled freak who centralized everything under one city state (like mini china)
Colonialism is just another nail in the coffin, the centralizing is drilled into every part of policy and military thinking - even language.
Never did I think I would catch a PolyMatter video this early.
Me neither, I just woke up and open youtube, I thought he upload this like 3 hours ago as always.
Me too
Me three
I love Thailand and Thai people. They are very kind people.
I hope you will find a stable regime that suits you.
Love from Turkiye.
Love and Respect to Thailand from India.
As a Thai citizen, it sounds like my country is like Poland, but we are vulnerable to coups, not outside invaders.
Sad thing.
Actually, Thailand is vulnerable to outside invaders but no one wants to invade Thailand, what would be the point?
@@farshimelt The British wanted to invade Thailand multiple times lol... but the Thais held them off
@@farshimelt keyword ; Natural Resources
Your channel is by far the one most capable of satiating my thirst for general knowledge with a vocabulary and dynamism suitable to the level of knowledge I have acquired from years of Wikipedia and other UA-cam science channels.
Great presentation, I think you! However, as an expat who has lived inside the Kingdom of Thailand for over 27 years now, some of your figures are incorrect regarding population. For example, Nakon Ratchisima, Udon Thani and even Khon Kean are all well over 1,000,000 in population in 2020. When I first came to the Kingdom in 1990, I was told that the population of Thailand was 70,000,000......and people are still being told the very same figure today, incorrectly!!! SO its easy to understand how the numbers you found and quoted are incorrect. And the size of Bangkok is continually perpetuated by the fact that there is seemingly (although not recently) always work to be had for those on the bottom of the economic ladder. Village people are so terribly left out of the "thriving economy" even in the best of times......so those who find themselves sick and tired of their grueling life as village peasants.....will flood into Bangkok in hopes of earning a decent living by working in a factory etc. etc.! Minimum wage is around $10 per DAY.....and its surely no accident that its calculated that way as opposed to by THE HOUR! Culturally ignorant villagers will often find themselves in a place where "one day" means 10 hours of labor or more! Exploitation of uneducated, unskilled laborers are common here as it most places around the world! Fortunately, villagers are a very persistent and difficult to beat down to severely! Village live is often FANTASTIC for young children, where they are loved by everyone, known to everyone and protected by everyone! Hence, these lovely village children have infinitely more FREEDOM in their village surroundings.....then children in "highly civilized" societies! Youngsters as young as 2 years old will have the run of the entire village areas! and are never lost of harmed in any way! Having been brought up in the upper middle class environment of Marin County, California.....I would much rather be born in one of the many, many poor but economically stable Thai Villages......than ANYWHERE in the USA!!! The old saying "it takes a whole village to raise one child" is very true...and the USA doesn't have any villages anymore.....Greenwich Village doesn't really count as a real "village" in anthropological terms! Thanks for sharing!!! D
Just a correction, if you base population of Bangkok on metro then you should do that with the other cities as well, otherwise Bangkok's population would be around 5,1 million. Nakhon Ratchasima, Khon Kaen, Udon Thani (where I live), Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Buriram, Chaiyaphum, Chonburi, Nakhon Sawan, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Petchabun, Roi-Et, Sakon Nakhon, Samut Prakan, Sisaket, Songkhla, Surat Thani, Surin and Ubon Ratchathani all have a population of over 1 million. While they officially go under provinces, they're all also widely considered one city (with the exception of some tourist cities/islands), even in governments. For instance, I live in a district 20 minutes outside of Udon Thani that has a population of roughly 70,000, yet we're all considering it as part of main Udon Thani, but outside city center. Changwat is Province, Mueang is city center, Amphoe is district, Tambon is sub-districts and Muban is villages. There are a few others as well. On paper this seems very much alike how we divide areas in the west, however they function differently, the people's view of subdivision levels are very different, and people live very differently as well, compared to say Norway where I'm from.
Another thing to mention is a large percentage of Bangkok's population and tourist areas are filled with workers from North and especially from Northeast. This makes up around 15-20 million, especially noticeable it would be in cities like Udon Thani (1,5 million) where the actual population is more closer to 5 million, if not more, if everyone was to go home at the same time. An example would be now during the pandemic Pattaya, Phuket, tourist islands and other places with foreign tourists, are now next to empty and most of these workers and business owners have now gone back home to North and Northeast.
On the flip side, the real number of people currently residing in the Greater Bangkok Metropolitan area, if you include the unregistered, all Thai workers, migrant workers and longterm stayers would it be between 20-25 million.
4:52 Birmingham is the 2nd largest English city, both in city-proper and metropolitan area.
By area, yes. But this list was ordered by inhabitants. Manchester has 100k more people than Birmingham
So this started an interesting little point I found.
Most statistical agencies do indeed report Birmingham as having the 2nd largest population of any city in the UK; apart from "Demographia" in their 2020 report "Demographia World Urban Areas 16th Annual Edition"
There they get the numbers that Polymatter shows here roughly, with London having 10,979,000 and Manchester having 2,727,000; numbers which I had thought were odd to begin with.
Demographia counts by inhabitants in the wider urban area; that is the extent of the city even beyond its municipal lines, ie the "built up area" which is an interesting stat to use.
Overall it's an interesting little rabbit hole of statistics to go down.
@@hannahb6249 Built Up Area is the way what the ONS replaced urban area with back in 2011, it think
As a Thai myself, this is a beautifully made video
You live in Bangkok right?
@@rvvz1562 yea
Thank you so much for shining light onto my country. Politics here has been incredibly frustrating for my entire life and with Covid it only gets worse. I wish more people would see and understand Thailand’s internal struggles.
Thailand's struggles have only to do with Thailand. Do you see and understand Armenia's internal struggles?
Well as a Thai people, Thailand is so damn mysterious in many terms. You know what I mean right?
so the girls in Pattaya isn't girls.........ah that's why my butt hurt!
พี่เขานิกระเทยสวยกว่าผู้หญิงแท้ แล้วไม่ยุ่งยากด้วย แล้วไม่มี attitude ด้วย
Very good point. This is the first time I've seen foreigner point out this issue. Basically it has been rural peoples elect governments and Bangkokians depose their governments while Bangkok hold half of resource and budget of country despite being 1/7 of population.
Moreover Bangkokians have mindset like, rural peoples (especially northern part and isaan region) are uneducated that's why democracy doesn't work in Thailand and those peoples aren't capable for elect government that's why we have to supporting coup by military junta. This is main narrative that was use in 2014 coup.
However new generation Bangkokians have opposite attitude tho, as you can see most of peoples right now is switch to pro-democracy.
@5:20 Can you tell me where "Chaopraya Surasak" city is? I've never seen from any map of Thailand
I always get so pleasantly surprised whenever I see a channel I really like cover my country
As a foreigner in Thailand love living here all things considered. ผมชอบคนไทยมากครับ
@@DoglinsShadow ***pat
One small note regarding Seoul's primacy ratio: The city itself has been shrinking for years and now has just about 10 million people. The average price of an apartment in Seoul is now right around $1 million. But just looking at the city, itself, doesn't really tell the story. Draw a circle around Seoul with a 50-kilometer radius. You've just circled half the population of the entire country, around 25 million people.
Why is Seoul proper shrinking? Does this mean that people are moving from Seoul's city proper to its suburbs?
This man deserves so much more subscribers
Just like manila, But thankfully Davao and Cebu are powerhouses as well thanks to geography!.
As a Thai person. Thank you for talking about the protest in my country and spread how bad Thai Mornacy is and the law to the world.
and if you read this. please please please help spread the news in the hashtag #WhatHappeningInThailand and help Thai people take Democracy back.
I am Thai , born and lived in Thailand happily all my life with no ploblems you mentioned. get out of your cave bro..
@@CHRŌMVS yeah i agree with ya
I support the monarchy if Thailand but even I think that lese majeste is a bit much
@@CHRŌMVS what make you unhappy is your attitude
@@CHRŌMVS if i do what is your problems. its not your business
Sometimes I'm in awe of Thailand that despite its coups and alternating between democratic governments and military rule, it's still able to maintain a fairly decent economy with viable agricultural, manufacturing and tourism sectors.
would you mind explaining about the agriculture bit?
@@mobinrood4986 Thailand exports plenty of rice and some tropical fruits especially to SE Asia.
Our economy is far from decent right now
I think that one thing that it has going for it is hard-drive manufacturing, but it also relies too heavily on tourism so it may be in more trouble than spain, for example
Private sectors work at their best
While having coups every 8 years doesn’t exactly help with stability note I am not criticizing the Thai government or the monarchy so please do not take this the wrong way
Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated? I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else. Gets me frustrated. Just admit that you love the videos I make, my dear jos
Yeah I do like the video
Edit:I WAS LIED TO AND FECK OFF
@@AxxLAfriku it just they want to keep people poor and other nearby country taken advantage of that since thailand hold the most land and resource....
@@campkira that idiot is not talking about this video.
With the last part of this comment, you definitely live in Thailand
Although primacy itself is lesser in South Korea than in Thailand, Seoul is still problematically big in other metrics. The Bangkok metropolitan area has a population of 11 million out of all 69 million Thai people. The Seoul metropolitan area has a population of 26 million out of all 51 million South Korean people. That’s more than HALF of all South Koreans living in or around Seoul, and we’re not even a city-state like Singapore. We’re 2.5 times larger than the Netherlands.
I thought I would never see this story from PolyMatter. Thank you for your accurate report.
Aaah, I had been thinking of doing a video on this!
You have like less than 500 subscribers lol your so bad like don’t be a youtuber if you can’t even get a million subs atleast get a real job
@@bornstar481 Thanks for looking at my channel ❤️
@@bornstar481 he may make it big in the future
"Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments. Geographers explore both the physical properties of Earth's surface and the human societies spread across it."
I am not sure if the problem presented in this video could be called "geography."
I love it when a seemingly complex political issue can be brought down to something seemingly unrelated like this. I was part of a debate in my high school about the state of Venezuela and whether or not to impose sanctions. Initially, it seemed like such a complex political issue that could never really be understood but as I looked closer and boiled things down more and more I realized there was really a simple factor at play, an invisible hand pulling on the strings of all democracies worldwide, natural resources. In essence, a country with abundant natural resources does not need productivity from its people, so there is no point investing in providing people with a fair comfortable life. All you need to do is acquire that natural resource. This is why places, where the main industry is something like diamonds or oil, is almost always a terrible place to live. That is really what happened in Venezuela, they switched the economy from human resources to oil and that bred the environment necessary for a dictatorship. So the only way to reverse that effect would be to make sure that oil was no longer a profitable business, ie. sanctions.
Just a little point- Birmingham is the UKs 2nd city, not Manchester- 1,020,589 vs 430,818
Even if you stretch it out to "urban area" you get this-
London - 8,960,000
Birmingham-Wolverhampton - 2,930,00
Manchester - 2,840,000
I last been to Bangkok 15 months ago. It was pretty nice. Would recommend shopping there, not just in Bangkok proper, but also in a floating market.
I suddenly miss Thailand a bit.
Shopping? Is that the extent of your Thai experience? You can shop anywhere.
This video missed out one very important and overriding point: the roles and influences of military in Thailand political and government system which this video did not mentioned at all.
I am an avid devotee of this channel, *and* of Wendover Productions, and it's rare that the working premises of the two are brought into such steep and swift collision. According to Wendover -- and credibly, it must be said -- city-size ratios within a country are conspicuously *not* dependent on country-specific factors. Rather they follow a predictable log-scale, with the second largest city in a country "always" being roughly half as big as the largest, and the third largest city being a third as big as the largest, and so-on.
Very nice video. I don't only mean the in formation given, but also the beautiful pictures shown and the calm voice.
Luckily enough the Thailand Massage parlours are stable and naturally occurring
#smayanjain
@@arnavjain762 we don't care shut up
Currently, they & the bars are shut down.
Hey man, when you took Oslo, did you include Bærum, Asker and Drammen? Or is just the county Oslo that populous? Cause that feels a bit wrong.
A country where the Monarch lives in Bavaria and a country that has lots of coups in the last 100 years, Thailand I must say you are more interesting than the Philippines
Yeah, what are we even? Just a couple of islands and just Indonesians in denial.
@@TheMaster4534 the westernized version of the polynesian family tree
@@TheMaster4534 Don't summon the Keyboard Warriors 🤣
@@potatopoh-tah-toh5039 Philippine is kinda bizarre compared to other countries in South East Asia. Spanish fault I guess?
@@TheMaster4534 Yup, Hispanized Indonesia with Ethnic Favoritism
From a long time expat in BKK, this is the best take I've watched from someone not living in the Kingdom.
Video about thailand: *exists*
My apartment building being in the b-roll footage of the video: *its free real estate*
Indonesian geography would be interesting...
Oh boy, now I can't wait for the Philippine version of this.
Same as Thailand, but it's 15x larger and its an island.
@@msgpatient7850 actually, not so much, indonesia is not as centralized and actively decentralize, especially with current administration that build a lot of infrastructure outside java.
@@briantarigan7685 for now, not so much. But we are certainly heading in the right direction.
@@msgpatient7850 yeah you're right, but there are also a lot of big cities outside of sumatra and java, like Balikpapan,Makassar,Ambon and even Jayapura.
Since when has Russia been protected from attack? They are the quintessential example of a country famously lacking natural defenses. Case in point: they've been invaded loads of times: the polish, the Swedish, the mongols, the British and French etc
You can invade it, and many did, you just cant succeed and hold it
Its natural defence is its sheer size
To both of those comments I say: id easily take mountains or coastlines as natural defenses any day over sheer size. Russia has had to resort to the strategy of defense in depth again and again. Because it has no other choice. It always has to let half its country burn before its able to exhaust and repel an attacker. So every victory is a pyrrhic victory.
I'd consider it quite a stretch to call that 'natural defenses'
@@Kevin-cm5kc You can understand what they meant though, even if it destroys Russia its nearly impossible for an outside force to take over Russia due to its sheer size
He was probably talking about defense from the Eurasian attacks rather than its Western front
The title is correct but for some years one main reason is China's Belt and Road initiative. It goes through Thailand and connects Indonesia. It is extremely beneficial for those countries but at the same time adverse for some western powers. The same western powers that finance "protesters" in Hong Kong.
I'm watching this from Thailand.
Thanks for covering this, I am from Thailand and I hate the current **government**
0:46 that Tanjiro jacket though
Where did you get the Primacy List? I'd really like to study it in more depth
I think, in your very well thought out presentation, you may have mistakenly left out the supremely top-heavy military and the role that they play in politics.
as a person who lived, studied and worked almost 7 years in Bangkok, with my educational background in Economics and Finnance, I partially agree with this video. Thailand economy is based on 4 major points :
1. Tourism
2. Agriculture
3. Export
4. Foreign Investment
for a country which Agriculture is a key pillar in its economy, saving lands for agriculture is more important than growing the urban areas. so it explains why Thailand cities are much smaller than the Capital city. saving the land for agriculture or tourism purpose rather than growing the cities. the main cause of instability is lack of powerful democratic institutions in the country and traditional system of building everything around monarchy.
First of all Political parties need to show their Loyalty to the king and then despite the king and his family are very humble, nice and generous, people who are connected to the Royal family have too much power ans use it for their own interest.
There must be a key factor to study in political science as the effect of neighboring countries in political stability of a country. Examples of Turkey, Thailand and some African countries.
"How many coups have you?"
Thailand : **Yes.**
This info is accurate. Great pics and vids of Thailand.
Was a kid when the 2006 coup happened and it was wild seeing tanks parked around my neighbor in Chiang Mai
You guys are just amazing. You even inspired me to start my own channel, thank you! 😍🙏🏻
#Smayanjain
4:48 "Far more than second place Manchester"
Really Birmingham is far larger than Manchester, just the government poorly defines where cities end.
Birmingham's metro population is ~4.3 million, while Manchester's is ~3.3 million.
Thx u for making this about my country. We have been under this dark clouds above our head for too long.
4:31 Austria should be on that list, too. Vienna is a whoppig 6.7 times bigger than Graz, and contains rougly a quarter of all Austrian inhabitants.
Exactly! And if we cherrypick our population data, like he did in his video, we could use the mteropolitan area data. 2,8 Million people for vienna, wich results in a whopping 9,8 ratio....
Maybe Austria is the most centralized country in europe?
For those who point out that the population data shown in this video isn't accurate, in my opinion, I think he is correct in showing Bangkok population including all the metropolitan area which included Samut Prakan, Samut Sakjon, Nakhon Pathom, Nonthaburi, and Pathum Thani as they are but a single city in real life (no rural area in between them). In provincial area it's a different story, outside of city municipality are vast rural area which can't consider the population live in those rural area as a population of a single city so we can't consider province's population as city's population. So if we talk about city population the city of Nakhon Ratchasima it will have registered population at only 126,391 people (according to wikipedia in 2019) even if we include all of the district which the city placed it still have population only 466,848, and much of Mueng Nakhon Ratchasima district is rural area. In case of Chiang Mai as a city, from official map the Chiang Mai city Municipality included almost all of the city area and have population only at 127,240. So his point still isn't wrong. Maybe he is wrong about the city of Chaophraya Surasak as it's one of the city municipality in an actual city area far larger that span the entire west coast of Chonburi like a megalopolis with population around a million but they're still 10x less population than Bangkok metropolis.
So anyway, I still think the point of this video is correct, Bangkok is too big and too important considering population alone, let alone many factor he mentions such as all the headquarter of anything "National" is in Bangkok, all the decision have been made here, so if anyone can control it it's the same as control the entire country. I don't think anyone can defile that as it's happen so many time up until now. Also, it's one of the factor that make any implementation of any policy or public service slow, very slow in fact, as everything to be done anywhere in the country must have been approve by central government first and amount of paperworks in order to make anything be done in this country are atrocious. (I think I didn't use wrong word for that)
Would love to know how you decided to draw the boundaries for the cities for Thailand. So far it seems slightly arbitrary:
- The only two "cities" (or province) here is Udon Thani and Nakhon Ratchasima
- Yes, Bangkok is also a province but you included 5 other neighboring provinces in there
- Hat Yai is actually a district in a province called Song Kla
- I don't know where Chaophraya Surasak is lol. It's definitely not a province though
You could probably make the same point regardless though. The number would just be different than 26x.
Why are you comparing cities to Provinces? Provinces are not cities. Contiguous urban area, which does not have rural area, is better.
I love to get the foreigners view on my country. More video about Thailand pleasesssss.
I'd just divorce Bangkok from Thailand, make it into an actual city state. Although that might be disastrous for both sides...
4:54 This graph is incorrect, it represents Cairo as 9 million because it doesn't count the greater Cairo metropolitan area which crosses provincial borders between Giza, Cairo and Qalyubia. If the population in the total metropolitan area regardless of provincial borders is counted it would equal roughly 20.9 million and Alexandria would remain the same 2nd place at 5.2 million. However, Cairo's 20.9:5 .2 (~4:1) still is way less drastic than Bangkok's 10:0.38 (~26:1).
So you're basically telling me that Thailand is like a table with one leg?
0:49
Tanjiro is that you
Thanks for not covering Tik Tok, this is super interesting!
@nonnac trac Man I have even received death threats at this point :D my skin is thick. Thank you for the nice comment!
Japan's geography can be like this as well. The Tokyo metropolitan area has the population of Canada. It's only Kyoto's status as a historical capital that keeps several institutions in place as well as being a joint Metro area with Osaka not unlike Dallas-Fort Worth for my American friends.
as a hong konger, i fully support the thai people and there want for democracy, its truly an amazing thing that i hope one day every country can achieve
嘩居然可以係到撞到香港人~~
I wanted to highlight that Paris urbain area (Île de France) is 12.2m inhabitants and you should not count the 2.4m inhabitants of the Paris "intra muros" area. Which means that Paris and Bangkok are more less as much centralized. Maybe there are other reasons for a coup than just the centralisation of the population in the capital which seems to be working well for France
I thought Chiang Mai was the 2nd largest city. Close to 1 million people in its metro area. Still tiny compared to Krung Thep, of course.
almost forgot that krung thep is another name for bangkok
@@kafuchino3435 Ban gok is another name for Krungthep.
5:30 Um... I don't think you've got your stats right here. What about Chiang Mai? I've never even heard of Hat Yai
Manchester being the UK's second city is a controversial statement.
Thailand's second-largest city is Chiang Mai, with 1.2 million people, not Hat Yai.
05:23 Chiang Mai is actually Thailand's second-biggest and well know city but to make his point, he conveniently leaves it out. This is why I take everything I see or hear with a grain of salt.
Still not a city though, It's a Province and Bangkok shouldn't be compared to Cities agreed?