ABSTRACT
The rapidly emerging megacity of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam’s largest city, contributes the dominant share of national gross domestic product. However, the concentration of population and economic activity, in combination with its rapid formal and informal expansion into flood-prone areas, make HCMC particularly vulnerable to fast-paced unsustainable development and the impacts of climate change. Recent results within the “Megacity research project TP HCMC” have shown that climate change is already causing urban environmental challenges and hazards. Nevertheless, recent urban development patterns have an even greater effect on the city’s exposure to environmental threats. Most of these environmental challenges are not new to the urban system of HCMC, and the region has a long tradition of adaptation (e.g., settling on elevated ground, building urban structures accordant to winds, trading on and living with—and on—the water). Over the past 30 years, however, the impacts of climate change have become more obvious. Additionally, since the early 1990s—along with the economic transition—the greater Delta region of HCMC has increasingly deviated from its traditional, more adaptive path of development. Development pressure resulting from population growth, economic growth, and higher levels of resource consumption (including land) has led to a sharp increase in land coverage, waste production, and traffic. Urban (infra)structures are increasingly expanding into low-lying areas, which hence gradually lose their previous ability to host ecosystems and function as buffer zones against flooding. Hence, the recent urban development of HCMC is not only a driver of local environmental change; by expanding into flood-prone areas, the city is also concurrently increasing its exposure to this change. Since many of the main impacts of climate change exhibit a land-use dimension, such as the increased frequency of urban flooding events or the intensification of the pre-existing Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, planning and land-use controls can be seen as the most appropriate adaptation-management strategy. The advancement of a commonly accepted spatial information basis can support the development of spatially explicit planning strategies and recommendations that anticipate climate change risks, and include a social dimension with regards to vulnerability.
