Published on Thursday, 11 July 2013 13:19Written by Brian Letwin

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Dr. Michael Waibel, along with Hilbert Henning, havelaunched the TP. Ho Chi Minh - MEGA City project to visuallydocument Saigon’s rapid urban development. The project iscurrently being assembled and the authors are seekingsubmissions. For more information, click the link above.

We spoke with Michael about the motivation behind theproject which has both personal and academic roots for itsorganizers.

Here is part 1 of the interview.

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A: My first contact to Saigon is related to family ties. My

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police due to black market activities but these have neverbeen confirmed.

As telecommunications engineer, he was based in Saigon andNha Trang during the late 1940s. His vivid memories andphotos from Indochina inspired me to focus on SoutheastAsia during my studies. Of course, the music and film culturerevolving around what we call the Vietnam War in the Westdrew my attention at quite an early stage of my life.

In the mid-1990s I started my PhD about the urbandevelopment of Hanoi. I investigated the socio-economictransformation of the Ancient Quarter of Hanoi and did manyinterviews with local shop-owners who I regarded as the maindrivers of change. I was particularly interested in theinteraction between the Doi Moi reform process initiatednationally and locally.

Ever since, I have been involved in academic and consultingactivities broadly dealing with urban development in Vietnamand in China. I usually travel to Vietnam 4-6 times a year.

In 2008, I became member of a research team funded by theGerman government to promote climate-adapted housingand energy-efficient buildings in Vietnam. Given a weakenforcement of state regulations in Vietnam, we pursued abottom-up and multi-stakeholder approach. Particularly, wetargeted the emerging urban middle class population, who wecall “new consumers”. They show a sharply increasingecological footprint due to changes in diet (more meat) andconsumption habits, the switch to cars and the renovation /construction of new houses. For example, we developedeasy-to-understand handbooks from which people canchoose between a set of measures like a menu.

In 2011, we published the Handbook for Green Housing, andin 2013, the Handbook for Green Products. Among others,this was supported by the European Chamber of Commerce,the Department of Construction of HCMC and the VietnamEnergy Efficiency and Energy Conservation Programmemanaged by Ministry of Industry and Trade as well as by KFWVietnam. By trying to convince rather than force the new

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In April 2013, I published an edited volume dealing with theurban development of the Ho Chi Minh City metropolitanregion. I tried to grasp a realistic picture about the multitudeof dimensions of recent urban development. One strategy toachieve this was by compiling narrative and scientific papersfrom authors of various backgrounds. Finally, more than 100photos complemented this volume, which was published inGerman by the Regiospectra Publishing House based inBerlin.

After having published this book, I realized that more effortsare needed to grasp the urban development of Saigon. That iswhy a publication with stronger visual features is beingprepared, right now.

In addition, after having flipped through my extensive digitalpicture base, which I began in the year 2003, I realized thatgiven the tremendous dynamics of urban development there,there’s great potential to use images to illustrate change overtime.

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