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Crossing Borders pp 97–116Cite as

Urban Transformations Across Borders: The Interwoven Influence of Regionalisation, Urbanisation and Climate Change in the Mekong Region

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Mekong region, a part of the world that is going through one of the most dramatic periods of urbanisation and economic integration, while also being highly vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters. Drawing on climate vulnerability assessments conducted in cities in Thailand and Vietnam under a regional programme, the chapter illustrates the significance of approaching disaster risk and climate change through the combination of systems and people-oriented approaches, rather than territorial approaches for understanding the regional and trans-boundary dimensions of climate vulnerability and disaster risk. The chapter considers the ways in which urbanisation creates new patterns of vulnerability and risk that go beyond spatial impacts of specific events. In addition to the agglomeration of assets and resources in specific physical locations, contemporary urbanization depends on complex systems of physical infrastructure and technology for generating services around water, food, energy, transport, and communications. Increasingly these urban systems networked and interlinked, increasingly at regional scales. The ways in which urban people interact with systems to derive benefits are significant factors in shaping both wellbeing and vulnerabilities. Fragility or failure in such systems can have far-reaching implications beyond the location of a specific event. Approaching urban systems as interlinked and networked, we consider cascading impacts of shocks and crises at multiple scales, often beyond the administrative boundaries of cities stretching across national boundaries, and how vulnerabilities and risks are distributed unevenly across different groups of people. In this chapter, we argue that such an approach to risk allows for identification of a range of multiple scale policy interventions, including those at the trans-boundary scale for disaster social protection, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation; and ultimately for setting a policy agenda for inclusive, transformative urban futures.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    At the time of writing this project had been approved by the Vietnamese government. However, this decision was reversed in 2016 with the collapse in global crude oil prices (Vietnam Economic Times 2016).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environment Department, University of York, York, North Yorkshire, UK

    Richard Friend

  2. Thailand Environment Institute Foundation (TEI), Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand

    Pakamas Thinphanga

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  1. Richard Friend
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  2. Pakamas Thinphanga
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Correspondence to Richard Friend .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Michelle Ann Miller

  2. Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Michael Douglass

  3. Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), United Nations University Bonn, Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Matthias Garschagen

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Friend, R., Thinphanga, P. (2018). Urban Transformations Across Borders: The Interwoven Influence of Regionalisation, Urbanisation and Climate Change in the Mekong Region. In: Miller, M., Douglass, M., Garschagen, M. (eds) Crossing Borders. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6126-4_6

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