Changwat Fang

When I checked for information on the district names in Chiang Mai which are present in the geocode list, but do not exist (yet), one result was that I became alert on the forthcoming creation of Galyani Vadhana district. But actually this was not the only thing I found, the second was a thread in the cm108 forum on the creation of a new province Fang.

This new province would consist of the three districts Fang, Mae Ai and Chai Prakan. Historically, the area was the Mueang Fang, first a district of Chiang Rai and in 1925 reassigned to Chiang Mai. Mae Ai was split off from Fang district in 1967, Chai Prakan in 1988. In total, it'd have a population of nearly 250.000 and an area of 2135 km² - which would rank it at 66th position by area and 68th position by population among the existing provinces.

Those petitioning for this new province even set up a website named FangOnline. Most interesting on that website is the campaign timeline, which I translated to present it here. I have also borrowed the campaigning photo below from their site.

Photo courtesy of FangOnline

• March 26 2009: Committee to campaign for creation of Fang province submitted petition to Speaker of the Parliament.
• April 5 2009: Committee submitted petition to prime minister in order to get acknowledge and support.
• June 16 2009: Committee submitted petition to vice chairman of parliament together with a list of 11,022 signatures of supporters

Though I don't think this petition will have much chance of being successful - it's a rather small area with relatively few citizen, so the costs of the new administration would be much higher than any gain for the more direct access to the administration, especially by reducing the distances to the province hall. But who knows, I will of course occasionally check again on FangOnline if there's any news on this project. Besides, there are much larger provinces than Chiang Mai which could have parts split off to form a new provinces much easier, for example Nakhon Ratchasima.