John Kriken is an internationally known city planner and urban designer and the founder of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s San Francisco-based Urban Design + Planning Studio. He served as an SOM general partner from 1994 to 2004 and continues today as a consulting partner. His work has won more than 35 national and international design awards from Progressive Architecture, the American Institute of Architects, the Urban Land Institute, and the American Society of Landscape Architects, among others. He has taught urban design at the University of California, Berkeley, Rice University, and Washington University, and has served on numerous arts and community boards, design review panels, and design award juries. He is the founding member of the 40-year-old Sunday Afternoon Watercolor Society. Ellen Lou’s life, education and distinguished career span the Pacific Rim during a period when the challenges of rapid urbanization have demanded her global perspective and expertise. As director of SOM’s Urban Design and Planning Practice in San Francisco, she leads the design of groundbreaking development strategies for vital metropolitan centers. In a time when cities represent the greatest hope for a sustainable future, her practice helps cities plan wisely for the future. A sought after speaker and advisor nationally and internationally, she consults regularly with planning officials and development community. Tim Culvahouse is Editor-in-Chief of the American Institute of Architects, California Council and past chair of the board of the non-profit Public Architecture. He is the editor, as well, of The Tennessee Valley Authority: Design & Persuasion, published in 2007 by Princeton Architectural Press. His articles have appeared in a wide range of journals, including 306090, ANY, Art Papers, Design Book Review, Harvard Design Magazine, Modulus, Perspecta, Residential Architect, and World Architecture.
“The private sector has an opportunity—and an obligation—to play a major role in building the sustainable, resilient cities that are needed by the next two billion people who will live in urban environments. Saigon South is the current best-practices baseline for how to do it.” — John Macomber, Harvard Business School
BUILDING SAIGON SOUTH
— John Kriken, Consulting Partner, SOM
Sustainable Lessons for a Livable Future
“This book is about how we can make cities more livable and sustainable. It is a case study of expanding the district of Ho Chi Minh City called Saigon South, built to support the city’s next million residents. This development, we believe, can offer lessons for city-building worldwide.”
BUILDING SAIGON SOUTH Sustainable Lessons for a Livable Future
“The book you are holding is a best-inclass illustration of how the private sector can play a major role in financing and developing the many new cities that need to be built in the coming decades.” – John Macomber, Harvard Business School
This is the story of the Saigon South Master Plan, a 3300-hectare expansion of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, conceived in the early 1990s to accommodate a million new residents of this rapidly growing city. More specifically, it is the story of the Phu My Hung New City Center, the 450hectare anchor of Saigon South. The New City Center is the first comprehensively planned new city center in Asia. The project, nearing completion at the time of writing in 2014, is noteworthy for a number of reasons. It is an integral part of a larger set of developments that, together, have jumpstarted the economy not only of Ho Chi Minh City but also of Vietnam as a whole. It is a rare example of successful city-building across a comprehensive range of criteria—economic, environmental, and cultural—in a period marked more typically by narrowly qualified successes and outright failures. It demonstrates the effectiveness of a set of urban planning principles focused not on iconic form-making but rather on livability, adaptability, and sustainability. It demonstrates, as well, the viability of a development philosophy that sees long-term social benefit and decent profit as compatible—even mutually supportive— goals. In short, it is a story of how we can make large, growing cities more livable and sustainable.
JOHN LUND KRIKEN
with Ellen Lou and Tim Culvahouse