Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

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city extension area but also in the existing city – as the
absorptive capacity of the land is severely compromised.
Advancing Agricultural Logics – High-land/ Lowland
& Orchard City
A careful reading of the existing territory provides clues
to an alternative to business-as-usual tabula rasa-making
by the indiscriminate filling of low-lands. Cantho’s existing
landscape is one of minute, yet important topographical
differences. The city and its surroundings have
existed for centuries in an intricate balance and interdependent
structure of water and land, permeable and
impermeable surfaces – all organized by the necessary
hydraulic territorial systems for water management and
soil stabilization – and capitalized upon by productive
low-land paddy and orchards atop dikes. Levels of inundation
determine distinct land uses (productive/inhabited,
safe/unsafe, etc.). In a land where the difference of a few
centimeters creates completely diverse conditions, the
primitive manipulation of topography becomes a powerful
urban design tool.
The high-land network of roads (existing and planned)
can be off-set by the lower-land waterways/ plains and
medium-land level vegetation meshes – in a system of
organized dispersal. The expanding city and its periphery
can be intentionally planned as a non-hierarchical territorial
network that allows urbanization to occur where infrastructure
(including high-land for structures) is organized.
An intermingling of urban and rural activities across
the territory’s networks of water and roads can not only
maintain the region’s productivity and dispersal of public
services, but also keep the ecological balance in-check.
Fig. 2: The highland mesh of the productive orchards can structure
urbanity on the periphery and infiltrate the urban core.
At the same time, the agricultural identity of the city can
be made more apparent. The spindly figure of Cantho’s
surrounding mesh of orchards could be extended along
the territory’s smaller waterways to the bank of the Hau
River and across the Cantho River to the newly planned
district. The city’s undeveloped islands could become
vast orchards. New flowering fingers could become
an important component of a system of public spaces
throughout the existing city and its extension – connecting
urban to rural, land to water and recreation to
production (fig. 2). The existing congestion could be
counterbalanced by inclusion of productive green zones
in the urban fabric. Afforestation (with orchards) could
be developed through ‘social forestry’ whereby unused
and fallow land is planted, maintained and harvested
by the common man with economic returns profiting the
community participation in the management of natural resources.
In particular ‘extension forestry’ – where plating
alongside canals, roads and railways – could not only improve
ecology, but also beautify areas, create economies
and eventually lead to a green network of an expanded
public realm. Strategic sites could as well host a series of
touristic and research-oriented programs.
Mediating River and Road
The overlapping of multiple networks is the region’s primary
spatial quality. Historically, intensification of urban
development occurred at the confluences of networked
systems. Traditionally, the waterway system, both natural
and man-made, was the foundation upon which other
organizational systems were laid. The Cantho and Hau
Rivers dominate the city and are important for trade (witnessed
by the prevalence of floating markets), whereas
Fig. 3: The water-based and road-based city can work hand-in-hand
to create an efficient public transport system.