Forest and Water Urbanism to adapt to global warming: a case study in Central Vietnam

The globe is getting warmer, and its consequences have become more manifest. As temperatures and sea levels rise, and rainfall patterns shift, there are more severe floods and droughts. Natural events such as heat waves, cyclones, and storms are more intensive and frequent, impacting biodiversity as well as social and economic lives. Population growth and ever-growing urbanization overwhelm and threaten the environment. (Natural) forests and water surfaces are shrinking due to relentless urban and industrial expansion and inappropriate land use. This has exacerbated the consequences of global warming. Hence, it is essential to stress and redefine the relations between settlements and landscapes, especially forests and water. Understanding a territory’s forest and water urbanism legacy is useful to strengthen and develop new scenarios where settlements can be re-woven with forest and water landscapes.

Through a case study of a transect in Thua Thien Hue Province in Central Vietnam, the thesis unravels the mutual interactions of different forests, water landscapes, topography, soil, and settlements and related problems (global warming and urban issues) across scales and time by interpretive mapping and critically exploring a section. The analysis of changes in landscapes over the longue durée of Thua Thien Hue reveals the co-presence of vernacular and political landscapes as well as their conflicts and contestations. Additionally, the dissertation employs design research as a tool to reflect and test different scenarios of forest and water as a landscape infrastructure to re-balance the vernacular and political as well as create new ways to settle with/in the landscape. As a conclusion, the research questions present-day land-use categories and proposes new hybridized terms to trigger alternative planning and urban design for Vietnamese territories in transformation.

Author: Minh Quang Nguyen

Supervisors: K. Shannon, B. De Meulder

Location: OSA-RUA, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, KU Leuven, Belgium

Type: PhD Dissertation

Status: Finished

Four ecological floors

Diverse ecological floors, including mountains, foothills, plains, and lagoons compressed in a distance of 60 km.

The conceptual section on the landscapes of Thua Thien Hue’s territory.

Diverse ecological floors, including mountains, foothills, plains, and lagoons compressed in a distance of 60 km.

Diverse cultures across ecological floors

The diverse landscapes provide an extended framework for the establishment of diverse Mon-Khmer, Cham, and Viet settlement structures (both for living and dead as in cemeteries).