ShophouseMetropolis

Documented cluster · Thon Buri

Talat Phlu railway-market rows

ตึกแถวย่านตลาดพลู

The dimensions actually measured

Footprints screened
51morphology only, never surveyed
Median frontage
7 mcitywide 5.1 m
Median depth
15 mcitywide 13.6 m
Deepest tenth
27.8 mp90 · citywide 27.6 m

Frontage and depth are the short and long sides of each footprint's minimum-area bounding rectangle, computed by scripts/build-shophouse-spine.py over the Overture/OSM screen. A footprint in this set has not been visited: the shape says shophouse, and nothing here says it is one.

What binds these buildings

Computed per footprint from depth, plot and neighbours — not merely listed. A clause counts as binding when this building's own geometry triggers it.

  • MR55 ข้อ 223 of 51

    Each คูหา: width ≥ 4 m (column centreline to centreline); depth ≥ 4 m and ≤ 24 m; ground-floor area ≥ 30 m². If depth exceeds 16 m, an uncovered void of ≥ 10% of ground-floor area between 12 and 16 m depth.

    The 4 m module is a floor set by law. Tirapas's surveyed 4 m module is the regulation made visible.

  • MR55 ข้อ 4121 of 51

    Setback from public road centreline: 3 m; 6 m where the road is under 10 m wide, for buildings over 2 storeys or 8 m — including ตึกแถว.

    THE decisive clause. An old shophouse occupies its whole plot because it predates this. Demolish it and the replacement must step back onto ground that, on a 12 m plot, is most of the site — so on many plots you cannot lawfully rebuild what you tear down.

  • MR55 ข้อ 41 of 51

    Continuous construction ≤ 10 คูหา and total row length ≤ 40 m, regardless of ownership.

    Why long shophouse streets break into readable blocks with gaps. The rhythm you see from the pavement is a fire rule.

Already over the depth cap
9deeper than the 24 m ข้อ 2 allows a new build
Median row length
1 unitsข้อ 4 caps a continuous row at 10
Rows over that cap
0lawful when built, unbuildable now

The interesting number is the third. Where a row exceeds today's cap, the building standing there could not be built again — which means demolition is not a reversible decision, whatever replaces it.

Where the pressure sits

Each footprint is placed on two axes: the appraised land value underneath it, split at the citywide median of ฿3,568,750, and its plot depth, split at 13.6 m — below which a 2 m setback takes a serious share of any compliant replacement.

  • Genuinely exposed12

    High land value, deeper plot.

    The land is worth enough to justify clearing and the plot is deep enough to absorb a setback. On present rules these are the ones that go, and an argument for keeping them has to be made on carbon, tenure or social capital rather than on the code.

  • Reuse is the easy answer21

    Lower land value, shallow plot.

    Little pressure to clear, and the setback would bite hard if anyone tried. Nothing needs defending here yet — which makes it the cheapest place to test what adaptive reuse actually costs.

  • Not under pressure16

    Lower land value, deeper plot.

    Neither the market nor the code is currently forcing a decision. Worth surveying precisely because there is time to do it properly.

2 of the 51 footprints here carry no quadrant, so the split above sums to 49 rather than 51. That is a join artefact, not a gap in the screen: the pressure layer classifies all 2,433 footprints, but the spine joins the two sets by centroid rounded to five decimal places, and 241 of the 2,433 miss that key by a metre or so. Those buildings have a quadrant; this page cannot currently name it.

Land under one footprint
฿1,942,250median · citywide split ฿3,568,750
District appraisal band
฿21,250฿50,000per m², Treasury appraisal

Appraised value is the base for transfer tax and sits below market, so every figure here is a floor, not an estimate.

What this page cannot tell you

Storeys are known for 1 of the 51 footprints here 50 carry none, and are left null rather than filled with a plausible number. Across the whole spine the same is true of storeys (for two-thirds of the set), tenure, structural condition, road width, build year.

  • Morphology is not proof. A narrow, deep footprint repeating along a street is the shophouse signature, but no field survey has confirmed that any individual building here is one, nor its age, condition or tenure.
  • Appraised value is the base for transfer tax and sits below market, so every land figure is a floor rather than an estimate.
  • The setback exposure assumes a road width, because per-plot road widths are not published — the assumption is stated in SPLITS and can be changed.

Where this comes from

A useful correction to palace-centred heritage: rail, canal, food trade and ordinary rowhouses made a second old Bangkok on the Thonburi side. The network matters more than a single trophy building.

Rail, road and canal market shophouses

Period
Thonburi market settlement
Kind
market row
District
Thon Buri

Documentation: Bangkok News / Around Online neighbourhood guide. Every computed figure on this page comes from scripts/build-shophouse-spine.py, which states each rule in its header.

Arkara, N. (2026). Talat Phlu railway-market rows — documented shophouse cluster (51 screened footprints) [Data set]. Shophouse Metropolis, BKKx. https://shophouses.nonarkara.org/shophouses/cluster/talat-phlu

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