- Adapting Ho Chi Minh City for Climate Change. Urban Compactness: a Problem or Solution?    278 kb by    Storch, Harry | storch@tu-cottbus.de    Short Outline HoChiMinh City is historically a region sensitive to climatic effects. Vulnerability to climate-related environmental processes is the result of unsustainable urban planning practices, associated with complex natural settings and structures. Abstract The process of adaptation needs a sound adaptation planning framework for incorporating vulnerability and resilience of land-uses into urban policy and decision-making in HCMC. Adaptation planning sys-tems, which are on the one hand, based on specifically selected sustainability indicators and data resources and on the other hand linked to available planning and assessment instruments including strategic envi-ronmental assessment represent an important guidance for the governance of global issues in their own right. A higher framework will function as a decision support system for site-specific decisions on loca-tions and design of urban development with the objective to reduce the vulnerability of the urban system in the face of climate change. The overall objective is to develop and incorporate adaptation into urban decision-making and planning processes with designation criteria and zones that will lead to an increase of resilience to climate-related physical and social vulnerabilities of the urban system of HCMC. Climate Change will likely change cur-rent climate conditions and lead to an ongoing sea-level rise and increase in extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall and heat waves etc. These climate related events cause a multitude of potential impacts and risks not only to natural areas but specifically to populations of densely built up metropolitan areas. In foreseeable future they may also cause indirect negative effects such as severe urban floods or disturbances of the energy supply or public transport systems in urban areas. The main task of assessing climate change related impacts in urban areas is to estimate the possible damages that might arise for human-influenced systems by climate change, including extreme weather events. In general there are two ele-ments that define the potential risk: first, the probability of the occurrence of the events and second the “e-lements” at risk. Events to be included are heat waves, heavy rain, floods etc. ''Elements” at risk are not only assets like houses, urban infrastructure services or economic losses, but also possible negative im-pacts on human health or livelihood. Keywords Urban Environmental Planning, Climate Change, Urban Form, Vulnerability Assessment, Urban Compactness Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2008: Urban Growth without Sprawl   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper