Urban Design Projects advancing a Transit-oriented Compact City (TOCC) Approach for Integrated Urban Development in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam

As the world rapidly urbanizes, with nearly 68% of the global population living in cities by the year 2050, challenges such as climate change and environmental degradation, as well as traffic congestion and air pollution become more significant as they impact urban areas. Cities contribute some 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly coming from the built environment and the transport sector. While compact cities can reduce motorized transport and promote active mobility, mass public transit systems can stimulate Transit-oriented Development and help people connect across larger distances. This paper proposes a novel Transit-oriented Compact Cities (TOCC) framework and applies this to an urban design studio case study conducted in conjunction between Thammasat University and UEH University in its development of a transit-integrated compact innovation district situated in Ho Chi Minh City’s recently opened Metro Line 1. This study seeks to better understand how new urban developments can enhance climate change mitigation efforts, while promoting sustainable, integrated, and more livable urban environments. The results show how four research-by-design proposals collectively illustrate how TOCC principles can be translated into context-specific urban design strategies, demonstrating the generation, testing, and synthesis of design concepts that expand knowledge and inform future urban design practices. As a way of informing a systematic framework for evaluating the integration of Transit-oriented Development, compact city principles, and climate-responsive urban design, these case studies were analyzed in a TOCC Strategies Matrix, suggesting indicators for real-world application of the TOCC model. What this study shows is that the proposed TOCC model is a theoretical advancement beyond existing TOD and compact city models, which not only combines their key ideas, but can also potentially overcome their individual shortcomings, so as to avoid Transit-adjacent Developments, by providing enhanced connectivity between the station and surrounding properties, fundamentally improving first and last mile connectivity