ArticleBMJ global health2025
Municipal officials' perspectives on challenges and opportunities in shaping urban built environments for active living in Thailand: a qualitative study.
Article in BMJ global health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionMunicipalities 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.
methodsWe 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.
resultsThree 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.
conclusionIn 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.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.