RESILIENT GROUND: A Proposal for Re-Establishing Relationship Between People, Land and Water in Saigon/Ho-Chi-Minh City Amidst Urbanization and Flooding

Congratulations to Thanh Tran, recipient of the Barry Bell Scholarship.

The urban fabric of Saigon is an intense and complex layering of development that resulted in dense alleyway neighbourhoods. Climate change, massive population increase and urbanization in low-lying regions within the last few decades have caused ever-increasing flash floods in overlooked alleyway neighbourhoods of HCMC. Immense engineering projects have not improved the situation, while responses by local authorities, such as elevating streets and alleyways, are disrupting the spatial, social, commercial, and cultural relationships of alleyway neighbourhoods. With dense alleyway neighbourhoods making up most of HCMC’s fabric, urban flooding needs to be addressed directly from here with a collective participation of local residents. My research examines the existing conditions of specific flood-prone alleyway neighbourhoods and proposes interventions to create resilience at different scales.

Thanh Tran is a Vietnamese Canadian researcher and a graduate student at UWSA. His research is about Saigonese alleyway typology, urban expansion and flooding.