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Urban adaptation is a critical issue for many of the developing countries of Southeast Asia. Vietnam is likely to be among the countries most adversely affected by climate change. Moreover, its largest city, Ho Chi Minh City is considered worldwide as one of most vulnerable to a multitude of climate-related hazards, including flooding, sea-level rise and extreme heat events. Similar to other rapidly developing megacities in Southeast Asia, Ho Chi Minh City has undergone enormous changes in recent decades and has rapidly developed into an emerging megacity shaped by global processes and local settlement patterns. Recently, the need to adapt to the multiple stressors of rapid urbanisation and climate change has become increasingly evident. Adaptation to climate change in urban areas depends on decision-makers’ understanding of the current and future impacts of climate change. Land-use planning as a place-based and problem-solving strategy has been recognised as a key tool in this respect, to mainstream climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction into urban development. Yet a key challenge is a lack of relevant information on exposed populations and assets at risk to planners and policymakers. The dissertation outlines the development of an integrated framework predominantly based on an urban structure type approach. This approach was used to manually interpret high resolution, remotely sensed imagery in order to portray and understand patterns of settlement and urban structure layout of the current and emerging landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City. The approach is able to capture the highly dynamic spatiotemporal, social and structural changes associated with rapid urbanisation. The overall findings show the applicability of the developed framework to produce important input indicators for risk adapted land-use planning. These are ultimately useful to determine hotspots for administrative interventions and to assist prioritising in spatial and urban planning decision-making.
Urbanisation is an extreme case of land-use change. The geographical patterns of urban expansion of a city have a direct relationship with its environmental quality, particularly water flows, flooding and urban thermal stress. A key question for urban policy and planning is how to direct these changes in ways that minimise environmental impacts and risks. Since many of the main impacts of climate change in Ho Chi Minh City additionally exhibit a land use dimension, such as the increased frequency of urban flooding events or the intensification of the already existing urban heat island effect, land-use planning and land-use controls can be seen as the most appropriate adaptation management strategy.
These recommendations have been developed under the German Ministry for Education and Research Funded research project ‘‘Integrative Urban and Environmental Planning for Adaptation of Ho Chi Minh City to Climate Change” which is funded as part of the research programme ‘‘Sustainable Development of the Megacities of Tomorrow’’ by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in close cooperation with the Department of Nature Resources and Environment, Ho Chi Minh City.
The main objective was to respond to the needs of the Department of Nature Resource and Environment, Ho Chi Minh City by providing guidance and recommendations that can be used by land-use planners and policy makers to reduce the potential adverse effects of both urbanisation and the current and future effects of climate change. The recommendations have been compiled as a stand-alone document that can be read and understood on their own, however they also contain references to the additional document entitled “Land-use Planning Recommendations - Adaptation Strategies to a Changing Climate in Ho Chi Minh City” referenced within this document as LUPR.Eleven specific focus areas were selected (labelledfrom A to K) in combination with the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. For each area the current situation is described and detailed planning recommendations are provided.