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

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housing neighborhoods. Constructed wetlands and aerated
lagoons could used to as a primary treatment to purify
wastewater (designed to treat household wastewater
for 3-4000 persons/ park). In such parks, spaces could
be created to accommodate certain programs in the dry
season, which are then flooded in the seasonal rainy
season (fig. 4). Each park is designed to have a different
identity, with a mix of local and regional programs. New
orchards could be cultivated near the public space, providing
shade while strengthening the agricultural economy;
they could also work as obstacles to urban sprawl.
Landscape Structuring Urbanism
Historically, Cantho was a water-based city which was
strongly structured by its landscape. Its present-day
modernization is in strong contradiction to the logics of
its territory. Yet, renewal of the region’s intrinsic nature
and its historical urbanization processes and patterns
can provide insights for growth. Cantho remains a frontier
region in 21st century Vietnam – and one of its primary
challenges is to reconcile rapid urbanization and mutation
with the far-reaching consequences of climate change.
Landscape offers a key to the way forward due to its
capacity to structure the territory in a context-responsive
manner. Great – specualtive – ideas are potentailly
possible in Cantho as the city (and country) has the
unprecedented opportunity to rethink the urbanization
paradigm. Imposed from above, ‚generic city‘, masterplan-driven
modernization is not the answer – such plans
alway remain detached from the contxt (spaitally, but also
soico-culturally and even economically). The underlying
logics of the terrtiory can provide both a sustainable and
intelligent way to deal with age-old problems and simultaneously
offer a form of local resistance to otherwise
homogenizing affects of globalization, technology and
infrastructure upon the territory.
References
Brocheux, P. (1995): The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy and
Revolution, 1860 – 1960; Madison: The Center for Southeast Asian
Studies, University of Wisconsin.
Li, T. and Reid, A.(1993): Southern Vietnam Under the Nguyen:
Documents on the Economic History of Cochinchina 1602-1777;
Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Hickey, G. (1964): Village in Vietnam; London and New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Nguyen, Q. V. (1996): ‘Urbanization in the Mekong Delta,’
Vietnam’s Socio-Economic Development 5, pp. 44-55.
Osborne, M. (2000): The Mekong: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future;
St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin.
Shannon, K. (2004): Rhetorics & Realities. Addressing Landscape
Urbanism. Three Cities in Vietnam. (unpublished doctoral dissertation,
KU Leuven)
Taylor, P. (2001): Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity
in Vietnam’s South; Honolulu: ASAA Southeast Asia Publications
Series, University of Hawai’I Press.
Thrift, N. and Forbes, D. (1986): The Price of War: Urbanization in
Vietnam 1945-1985; London: Allen and Unwin.
Wright, G. (1991): The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism;
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.