On 30 May 2025, the Build4People delegation trip members undertook a guided site visit to the Phú Xuân Wetland Park located in the Southern suburban district of Nhà Bè of Ho Chi Minh City.
This wetland park serves as a good-practice example of sponge city implementation and as a soft adaptation measure. It is located in an area characterized through many natural rivers and canals but also through massive urban spatial expansion was particularly designed to preserve the existing 4,600 m2 water coconut tree area and even to extend it by approximately 3,000 m2 of green fields and trees.
Besides its function to store temporarily rainwater, the Phú Xuân Wetland Park provides attractive spaces for leisure activities. As a nature-based solution it further serves as a demonstration project for soft climate change adaption in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and the whole region.
Given the foreseeable lack of sand needed for the construction of hard infrastructure, and the huge spatial dimensions of climate change affected areas within the whole mega city region of Ho Chi Minh City, the implementation of such blue-green infrastructure solutions is regarded as the most valid, resource-efficient and cost-effective option of climate change adaptation.
That is why the Phú Xuân Wetland Park has also been included as a good-practice example into the recent Build4People Planning and Design Guideline „Blue-Green Infrastructure“ which is part of the so called B4P Transformation Toolbox.
On this occasion Build4People would like to kindly thank Steven Petit and Ms. Ngoc Le, both OMEGIVING Vietnam, as leading contributors of its sub-chapter „Neighbourhood Blue-Green Infrastructure“.
Furthermore, Build4People would like to express its deep gratitude to Mr. Lê Nguyễn Ngọc Hải, Lecturer of Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Resources and Environment (HuNRE), and former Government Official at Nhà Bè District People’s Committee, who carefully guided us to increase our understanding about the key features of Phú Xuân Wetland Park.
To allow for a smooth guidance, all translations were done by Ms. Lê Vân Anh, Director of the Institute for Regional and Urban Studies (IRUS).
Finally, Build4People would like to express its deep gratitude to Dr. Phạm Trần Hải, Deputy Head of the Department of Urban Management Studies at the Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies (HIDS) and to his colleague Mr. Lê Hồng Nhật, for supporting the arrangement of this highly insightful site visit.
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