EMERALD CITY' A ROADMAP TO SUSTAINABLE BUILT ENVIRONMENTS IN TRANSITIONAL CITIES

Abstract

The Emerald City epitomises a sustainable built environment desired by transitional cities. This thesis develops a roadmap to enable transitional cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to reach the revered vision of an Emerald City by the shortest possible path. It enables them to ‘leap-frog’ the tedious path taken by cities like Seattle, USA; as it transforms from a traditional city to a sustainable modern city. None of these recommendations nurture ambitions of correcting existing problems like the absence of a comprehensive legislation and its enforcement. Instead, the roadmap will accommodate these shortcomings in its recommendations. This is possible only, as the thesis will show with a fundamental relook at traditional approaches to sustainable built environments and to describe the city through the language of complex adaptive systems. A study into the obstacles that prevent transitional cities from reaching a state of sustainable built environment is also done. The findings of this thesis are the outcome of first hand interviews conducted with the a key stakeholder of the city – the man on the street – inhabitants of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. This study is central as it provides the premise for the author to apply complexity theory to derive a roadmap with recommendations to surgically spur transitional cities along the path towards a sustainable built environment. The roadmap introduces implementable policies and planning conditions that can be contextualised to suit the unique environs of transitional cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City with the ultimate objective of achieving a sustainable built environment. The four phases of the roadmap centres around: Phase I – centrality of inhabitants, Phase II – accept that there are multiple visions and pathways to attain them, Phase III – built environment solutions specific to areas, and Phase IV – redefined role of government.