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Just 7½ km from the center of the expanding city of Chiang Mai, Thailand, farmers gather and direct the monsoon waters through an intricate pattern of weirs and canals to fill rice paddies, as their ancestors have for centuries. An intricate community irrigation system not only manages the distribution of water fairly upstream and down but also allows most farmers to grow a second dry season crop by directing water stored behind the Mae Kuang Dam. However, for almost 10 km, the Mae Kuang River winds inside the city’s newly constructed Outer Ring Road, trapping multiple villages, temples, weirs, and hundreds of rice paddies, inside land planned for urban expansion. Meanwhile, dozens of gated subdivisions mushroom along the new ring highway in land designated for agricultural preservation.