Municipal officials' perspectives on challenges and opportunities in shaping urban built environments for active living in Thailand: a qualitative study.

Abstract

Introduction: Municipalities play a critical role in shaping built environments that support active living, yet little is known about how municipal officials interpret these agendas, implement them or balance them with competing policy demands. This study explores how municipal officials in urban Thailand perceive and implement built environment strategies, manage constraints and identify opportunities to promote active living.

Methods: We conducted a qualitative study using semistructured interviews with 27 informants: eight elected officials, 15 senior appointed officials and four technical staff from seven municipalities across Thailand. Municipalities were purposively selected to reflect variation in geography across seven regions and administrative levels, including metropolitan, city and town contexts. Thematic analysis combined deductive coding based on policy-related topics such as roles, coordination and governance challenges with inductive coding to identify emergent themes.

Results: Three themes emerged. First, municipal officials commonly viewed the built environment through a recreational lens, prioritising parks and leisure spaces for their visibility, popularity and alignment with community expectations. Planning was influenced by leadership preferences and external models. Second, implementation was hindered by institutional fragmentation, overlapping mandates, weak cross-sector coordination and contextual factors such as complex land use, unregulated street activity, motorcycle-dominated mobility and political sensitivities. These challenges were more pronounced in smaller municipalities with limited technical capacity. Third, enabling factors included strengthened decentralisation, national incentives (eg, additional floor area near transit hubs), partnerships to repurpose underused spaces, digital tools such as mobile apps for responsive service delivery, adaptive leadership for public communication and leveraging local assets to support inclusive, context-sensitive development.

Conclusion: In urban Thailand, municipal strategies for active living continue to emphasise recreation over mobility. Implementation remains constrained by institutional and contextual challenges. Advancing more inclusive and responsive environments will require stronger governance, supported by decentralisation, community partnerships, digital tools, local assets and adaptive leadership.