Urban Study Notes: Week 4: Exercise

1) How are your cities addressing land-use planning issues in the light of climate variability?

Current urban development in Ho Chi Minh city shows a lack of effective planning and plan enforcement mechanisms. According to DONRE, by the year 2025, on the basis of the current HCMC urban development master plan, one-third of the available agricultural land would be rezoned as construction land and becoming available for new developments. Alongside this ongoing urbanisation, comes the loss of valuable surrounding multi-functional green and open spaces, which are not only important for agricultural production but also for the regulation of both the urban climate and urban water balance. Lots of channels and lakes in the city have been filled up or cleared out. Thus, water retention capacity of the city has reduced 10 times within less than a decade, and the number of flooded locations, the flooding frequency and its duration has increased continuously in the city.

Recently, the Megacity Research Project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research has organized the conference "Megacity Research Dialogue Ho Chi Minh City: Planning for a Changing Climate." Main findings and recommendations for integrative urban and environmental planning such as sustainable strategies for climate-oriented urban structures, energy-efficient housing typologies and comprehensive environmental protection have been presented to assist DONRE with administrative policy making. In their recommendations for land use planning, protection of low-lying open spaces, reserving rooms of urban open spaces, natural landscape for water retention, flood water management and urban agriculture are highlighted. In addition, keeping areas to generate and transit cool and fresh air lowers and offsets the energy demands for cooling in this hot tropical climate.

2) How might an integrated interdisciplinary approach to land-use planning, such as those outlined in the interviews with our Latin American experts, help overcome specific challenges in your cities?

Climate change is a complex issues which affects and involves all sectors and a system approach is needed. Therefore an integrated interdisciplinary approach to land-use planning as outlined in the interviews would be very helpful in facilitating the cooperation between related departments (for example the Department of Planning and Architecture, Dep. of Transportation, DPI... and DONRE). Also it enable local participation, local and expert knowledge combination, assisting well-informed and high consensus decision-making.

References

Comments

Jyotiraj Patra, India

Posted February 24 at 21:42 (GMT-6)

Dear Thuy,
Thanks for sharing the case of Ho Chi Minh city. 10 fold reduction in water retention capacity is quite significant and most of these have been because of filling up of the city's lakes and water channels. The new project envisages a 'comprehensive environmental protection' strategy for a changing climate. Does this include restoration of the lakes and channels? I am interested to learn more about this as this presents a case of ecosystem-based approach to urban resilience. Secondly, how has been the participation of the public and other stakeholders in this 'research dialogue'? And how is the existing planning strategy or the overall institutional framework adapting to these recommendations and the time frame for it?

Could you please share about the 'inter-disciplinary' nature of research and who all were involved in this research?
Regards,
Jyotiraj

Thuy Duong Pham, Viet Nam (Vietnam)

Posted February 26 at 07:35 (GMT-6)

Dear Jyotiraj,
Thanks for your comments! I would like to make it clear a little bit. The Megacity Research Project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research is a research project and the results/findings mean to assist the city as land use recommendations for adaptation to climate change. So they are recommendations from the research, but ultimately, it is the city and DONRE has responsibility to integrate these recommendations in its land use planning and enforcement.
I attach here links to the 2 publications from this research: The Handbook for Green Housing (is the result of the working group on climate-adapted housing and energy-efficient buildings) and the Community Based Adaptation Handbook. There will be the publication on Land Use Recommendations uploaded to the website in the future (I attended the conference so i got the internal version). In the Land Use Recommendations, protection of low-lying open spaces, reserving rooms of urban open spaces, natural landscape for water retention, flood water management have been included. More information on the research projects and research team you can see at the link http://www.megacity-hcmc.org.
With my best regards.

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