The Urban Risk Dilemma: Urbanisation, Modernisation and Disaster Risks in Ho Chi Minh City

摘要

The future challenges for urban planning and urban governance are often far more observable within the context and complexity of urban agglomerations in countries of the Global South like Vietnam. Here urban development is dynamically changing both urban form and function. More attention therefore should be placed on documenting, mapping and comparing the spatial distribution of urban structures and population over time. This however would require conceptual and methodological clarity to go beyond simplistic assumptions and to arrive at spatial planning recommendations, which effectively direct urban growth and redevelopment priorities and patterns. Rapid urbanisation is a manifestation of the ongoing modernisation process in Asia accompanied by rapid economic and social development. The environmental dilemma, as the major risk component of urbanisation, stresses the negative side-effects of urban-environmental processes. Urbanisation and environmental change is seen to shape the basic prerequisites for urban resilience to climate related hazards. In one sense, the local urban environmental risks themselves can be seen to reflect the challenges of such changes through global climate change and its impacts on population.