The top-down approach in the conservation of urban cultural heritage in Bangkok by the central government has generated a number of cases of urban unrest. An idea of city beautification via excessive open space provision is an objective of such top-down policy, resulting in several clearance and relocation proposals. With the growing community pressure and local political support, such proposals have failed to achieve. Tha Tian community is a case among the affected relocation targets that has been resisting the policy. The community is situated in the most prime cultural site of the conservation area and according to the conservation master plan, most of the mixed-ownership 490 shophouse units have to be pulled down to give way to open space. A small number of existing beautifully decorated shophouses will be left vacant and turned into a museum. To date such proposal has not been implemented in spite of budget availability. The failure of executing the plan led the local government –Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, the BMA, to seek for alternative solutions in 1997. The alternative project for Tha Tian was conducted through a research team from a planning school, which changed the approach by running the community involvement program at the beginning. The project starts by both surveys of architectural value and living prospects of the inhabitants. A series of participatory techniques was applied to receive the community consent. The architectural survey proves that many more buildings should be preserved due to their intrinsic values. Results of the household survey shows that the community had very strong social tie and had already established an official organization as a body to negotiate with the government authority. Alternative physical development plan and shophouse development guidelines were proposed. In the participatory process, representatives of the BMA also took part to ensure that the proposal would not be a castle in the air. After the alternative plan was finalized, the residents started their community improvement activities with the BMA. The activities’ fund was from mixed sources. Regarding the shophouses as a sort of cultural resources, residents of Tha Tian have proved to some degree that the improvement of the resources can be managed by the community if implementation opportunity is given by the local government. However, community’s activity in cultural resource management is still limited due to the existence of top-down conservation policy from the central government. Under this centrallocal governments awkward condition, the community can not go further for more complicated improvement activities like building restoration and waterfront redevelopment because fear of eviction and policy uncertainty still exist.