Paper Title
Community Communication in Eco-Town Development

Abstract
Community communication remains a key factor of raising public participation in environment, development and sustainability. An eco-town development deals with the environmentally-friendly actions in respect to resource efficiency and impact reduction was considered potential for Chombueng-Bankha-Suanpueng communities, where become the emerging weekend-tourism destination for Thai people. Questions are as to what benefits of eco-town development, why are necessary, and how the vulnerable communities share their roles and such processes. Besides exploring a linkage between community communication and eco-town development, this area-based study also examines the role of media in addressing this environmental co-existence. An approach of social action research was used to inquire on the environmental management, the eco-town principle and implementation, and the communication practice. The perception and understanding of eco-town concept gathered from community leaders and target informants are measured with the site survey and a set of rating-scale questions. The findings are that the levels of perception and understanding of eco-town value are quite low to lowest, most local people have neither interest in shifting their habitat to eco-town, nor participation in such development, and that the communities are likely to communicate via social media. Rather, the way of community communication is behind their environmental co-existence. Keywords - Community Communication, Eco-Town Development, Environmental Co-Existence.