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Lecturer, Faculty of Industrial Fine Arts, Ton Duc Thang University, Tan Hung Ward, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
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Lecturer, Faculty of Industrial Fine Arts, Ton Duc Thang University, Tan Hung Ward, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Lecturer, Department of Land Management, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Ho Chi Minh City, historically known as Saigon, is being redeveloped at a pace that places pressure on heritage values located beyond protected monuments and colonial-era buildings. This study examines how earlier hydrological, settlement, commercial, defensive, administrative, and metropolitan structures remain visible or latent in the present urban fabric. It applies a qualitative historical-cartographic and urban-morphological design informed by the Historic Urban Landscape approach. Historical maps and plans, archaeological and historical scholarship, contemporary morphological research, heritage studies, and current planning documents were compared across three analytical periods: the pre-colonial riverine landscape, the Nguyen dynastic city of Gia Dinh, and the modern metropolitan period. Five attribute groups were coded by form, function, association, continuity state, evidence confidence, vulnerability, and planning relevance. The analysis identifies four modes of survival—persistence, adaptation, overwriting, and latency—and shows that two long-duration systems provide the strongest cross-period continuity. The hydrological-commercial system linked waterways, landing places, markets, production, mobility, and everyday life. The defensive-administrative system linked citadel geometry, strategic routes, institutional compounds, and later street organization. Their traces are uneven and often fall outside conventional building inventories. The study contributes an operational use of the urban-palimpsest concept by connecting historical evidence to specific planning responses. It recommends a georeferenced multilayer heritage atlas, hydrological heritage corridors, archaeological sensitivity zones, interpretation of verified citadel lines, ensemble-based adaptive reuse, graded development controls, and participatory monitoring. These measures provide a practical basis for integrating layered urban history into metropolitan planning without Treating the city as a fixed historical artifact.
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