- Spatial Indicators for Assessing Climate Risks and Opportunities within the Urban Environment of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam   click here to open paper content2237 kb
by    Downes, Nigel & Storch, Harry & Michael Schmidt, Hendrik Rujner | downes@tu-cottbus.de   click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper
Short Outline
For the emerging megacity of Ho Chi Minh City, as for many urban settlements throughout Southeast Asia, the need to adapt to the multiple stressors from rapid urbanisation and climate change has become increasingly evident.
Abstract
For the emerging megacity of Ho Chi Minh City, as for many urban settlements throughout Southeast Asia, the need to adapt to the multiple stressors from rapid urbanisation and climate change has become increasingly evident. The city is seen to be particular susceptible to both the current and future impacts of climate change, due to its specific geographic setting and its underlying rate of urbanisation. These impacts, if unaddressed, will present significant development challenges and infringe upon the overall urban functioning and liveability of the city as a whole. However, climate change risks and opportunities are distinctly heterogenic within the complexity of the surrounding urban system. In addition to exhibiting a temporal dimension, risks and opportunities display well-defined spatial dimensions, are site-specific, highly locality and scale dependant. As such future impacts will be felt to varying degrees in different locations. Acknowledging this spatial component is critical for advancing understanding and identifying the impacts and opportunities presented by climate change. Planning responses are required that on one hand adapt the city to climate change and on the other maintain or enhance the current urban environmental system without hindering development. An important prerequisite for establishing efficient proactive and rapid adaptation planning strategies is the spatial and rational characterisation of the current urban fabric according to vulnerability relevant features. This paper outlines an urban structure type approach as a tool for the integrated assessment of urban resilience. The approach provides a common spatial framework at the resolution of the urban block for data integration and to compile existing vulnerability concepts from various thematic and scientific disciplines at the same spatial scale. The scale provides a clear method to generate portfolios of block-specific core indicators, move across scales, run scenarios and aggregate to larger planning horizons, ultimately useful to aid decision-making.
Keywords
Adaptation, Climate Change, Spatial Planning
Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2011: LIVEABLE CITIES: URBANISING WORLD, Meeting the Challenge
click here to open paper content  Click to open the full paper as pdf document
click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper  Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper