GREAT HANOI | Capital Masterplan by 2030 / Vision for 2050

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Hanoi needs $60b for infrastructure development by 2030: PPJ

source: Intellasia | An Ninh Thu Do | Doi Song & Phap

Hanoi needs to invest $60 billion in infrastructure development until 2030, state media reported Tuesday, citing a plan by a consulting consortium Perkins Eastman-Posco E&C and JINA (PPJ).

The consortium of US and South Korean companies proposes some $30 billion for infrastructure development in the 2030-2050 period, the An Ninh Thu Do newspaper reported March 30.

The figures come from a construction plan for Hanoi until 2030 with a vision for further development to 2050. The Vietnamese government selected PPJ to design the plan at a cost of some $7 million in late 2008.

The plan is scheduled to be submitted to lawmakers for appraisal in May.

In a meeting with PPJ and government officials March 27, the Vietnam Construction Environment Association (VCEA) criticised the design and called it "an infeasible project."

The association cited 10 serious shortcomings in the plan, particularly in terms of environment and resettlement, the Doi Song & Phap Luan newspaper reported March 30.

"With a love for Hanoi, and for the pride of the fatherland, we [Vietnam] must not accept such a bad plan with shortcomings," PhD Pham Ngoc Dang, VCEA president urged.

The VCEA proposed that the handover of the plan to lawmakers for appraisal should be delayed to correct the deficiencies.

In particular, the association requested PPJ to make a careful strategic report on environment to submit to the state authorities.

[tq]

[project] Thang Long Axis

originally posted by purespring
source: tathy.com

[KoolKool]

Originally Posted by the extreme

why not just let the people decide on the infrastructure?

they are deciding! Everyone in Ha Noi are deciding!

[tq]

Main Economic Zone - Song-hong







number 2 in the sketch. number 1 is the city center.

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Hanoi plans green, elegant, modern capital

source: Nhan Dan

A master plan for the capital of Hanoi through 2030 with a vision to 2050 has received special attention from the public as it is expected to create an image of a “green, civilised, and modern” city.

The plan has been adjusted many times and is now in the phase of collecting ideas from the public, experts, ministries and agencies. This once again affirms the importance and historical significance of the capital planning.

Compared to the capital planning adjustment 10 years ago, Hanoi now has a total area of 3,300 sq.km, 3.6 times larger, and a double population, with 6.2 million people, making it one of the largest capital cities in the world.

However, strategic development plans and orientations are required to build Hanoi into a civilised and modern city that still preserves its thousand-year-old cultural values.

The Hanoi Capital Construction Master Plan for 2030 with a Vision to 2050 submitted to the municipal Party Committee recently is viewed as rather comprehensive.

Under the plan, Hanoi will have a population of around 9.1 million by 2030 and over 10 million by 2050. Its nucleus urban areas will accommodate 4-4.6 million people and the downtown core, including the Old Quarter, will have a maximum population of 800,000 citizens.

Five satellite urban areas, including Hoa Lac, Son Tay, Xuan Mai, Phu Xuyen-Phu Minh and Soc Son will have a population size of between 127,000 and 750,000 dwellers each.

The consulting unit PPJ, a consortium made up of the architectural firms Perkins Eastman of the US and Posco E&C and Jina from the Republic of Korea, has proposed setting up a green belt along the Day, Tich and Ca Lo Rivers. The belt will account for 68 percent of the city’s total natural area.

In the downtown core, the density of green trees and water surface is expected to increase to 7-15 sq.m per head in 2030 from the current figure of 1-2 sq.m.

In the long run, the land fund for the administrative urban area, including the National Administrative Centre, is planned to be placed at in the bottom of Ba Vi Mountain and adjoining the northern side of the Hoa Lac Urban Area.

A new traffic axis will be formed from the Hoang Quoc Viet-Pham Hung T-junction to the Ba Vi Mount, connecting the Thang Long and Xu Doai cultures. Along the axis, there will be cultural, historic and entertainment works, including systems of museums, exhibitions and art centres.

To accommodate the capital city’s trade activities and local travel demand by 2030, Hanoi will have eight more bridges and one tunnel across the Red River alongside building a new national railway and upgrading rail lines in the outskirts.

The Noi Bai International Airport, the largest in the northern region, will be expanded to raise its transport capacity to 20 million, 25 million and 50 million passengers in 2020, 2030 and 2050 respectively.

The Old Quarter will be restored so that it still maintains its historical values, existing scenes and a common living space.

The relics of ancient Thang Long, the Long Bien Bridge and a system of thousands of temples, pagodas, ancient villages and craft villages in the outlying districts of Son Tay, Quoc Oai and Dan Phuong will be restored and repaired.

According to the consulting unit, the total investment for the city’s infrastructure development is estimated at around US$ 60 billion by 2030 and US$ 89.9 billion by 2050, of which, US$ 16.8 billion will be poured into traffic works.

The Hanoi Capital Construction Master Plan is expected to be submitted to the National Assembly for approval at a session in May this year. After getting the NA approval, the planning map will be displayed during the 1,000th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi in order to enable the people to see the face of the capital city in the next 40 years. (VNA)

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Crystal ball’s views for capital
Update: 12-4-2010

source: Vietnam Investment Review

A blueprint for Hanoi’s future development has hit turbulence. The Vietnam Construction Environment Association has labeled the capital’s master plan to 2030 and with a vision to 2050, proposed by a consulting consortium Perkins Eastman-Posco E&C and JINA (PPJ), as “infeasible research”.


The blueprint is necessary to address Hanoi’s runaway growth

“The plan to develop Hanoi plays a vital role not only for the city but the whole nation. It [the master plan] will bring harm to the city’s environment and development if it is not done properly,” said association president Pham Ngoc Dang.

“We have officially proposed the government take consideration of our 11 issues when appraising this master plan,” Dang said. The association asked the government to ask PPJ to adjust 11 issues, particularly in terms of environment and feasibility.

The plan, scheduled to be submitted to law-makers’ review in May, proposed $60 billion to build technical infrastructure systems to 2030, from overseas development assistance, foreign direct investment, bonds or other financial credits. However, the association claimed that the loans would place a heavy burden on the country’s economy.

The association also said the removal of 400,000 people out of Hanoi’s downtown area and 300,000 people from the Red River banks to suburban districts was not feasible.

“We have planned many times to move people out of the city centre in the past years, however none of those plans were successful and the result is that the population is still increasing,” the association’s report said.
Apart from that, PPJ experts only proposed taking over land from farmers to build modern residential areas, roads and industrial zones but did not pay attention to create livelihoods for the farmers.

It said the movement of the nation’s administrative centre to the foot of Ba Vi mountain was “unsustainable” and would cost too much money.

“This is unsuitable to government’s previous orientation. It [Ba Vi] is also too far from the northern economic zone’s core as stated by the government including Hanoi, Hai Duong, Haiphong and Quang Ninh,” the report states.
It said Ba Vi mountain was a protected area and it should be reserved for preservation and tourism development.

Other issues relating to the development of the Red River’s two banks, fresh water supplies and drainage systems, floods, waste and cemetery plans, environment protection, transport system and industrial zone development in the master plan also raised further questions.

The development master plan for Hanoi has been designed by PPJ for one year after the capital city was expanded in 2008 to include the former Ha Tay province, four communes of Hoa Binh province and Me Linh district of Vinh Phuc province.

By Bich Ngoc

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Hanoi showcases construction plans
Last update 23:32, Thursday, 22/04/2010 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – An exhibition introducing Hanoi construction plans to 2030 and the vision to 2050 opened on April 21 in Hanoi, attracting thousands of people.


The exhibition attracted hundreds of people on the morning of April 21.

Each visitor can note their comments on the draft plan. The exhibition centers on a a mock-up of future Hanoi after 2030, introduced to the Hanoi People’s Council on April 20.

Many maps on land use, traffic structure and satellite cities are displayed. A short video clip about the plan is also screened on the wall.

Most visitors on the first day were interested in the Thang Long axis and the scheduled site for the new national administrative zone.

“The current administrative centre needs to be relocated because it is very narrow, but I don’t think it should be moved to Ba Vi, because this site is very far from Hanoi’s centre,” said Mr. Tran Xuan Loc, a retired official.

Tran Than, former official of the Union of Vietnamese Scientific and Technological Associations, paid special attention to the development of satellite cities and suburban areas. He thinks it is necessary to build satellite cities to reduce population density. He praised the idea of a green belt, but he also noted the draft plan is costly and some parts are unfeasible because they require a lot of land.

Phan Duc Dong, headmaster of Vocational Training School No.1, maintained that the network of schools in the draft plan is suitable. “I hope this plan will be implemented early and quickly. Forty years is too long to have a city like the one,” he smiled.

Many visitors came just to know whether their houses and land are affected. Many real estate brokers were also on hand.

The exhibition will remain open until May 1.

Maps introduced at the exhibition:


The mock-up of Hanoi after 2030 with a total area of 3344.47sq.km. Hanoi had 6.23 million people in 2008. The city is estimated to have around 10 million people by 2030.


Hanoi will develop with a nucleus surrounded by five satellite cities and five other towns.


The administrative and political centre.


Hanoi’s culture and landscape will be developed and preserved.



The city will also have green and public spaces and many entertainment zones.




Hanoi will develop the city along the Red River.



The 201sq.km Hoa Lac urban area will be home to around 600,000 people.

[Indictable]

Can't wait to visit Hanoi next year!

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Hanoi’s master construction plans win people’s agreement
Last update 10:27, Thursday, 06/05/2010 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge - Most visitors surveyed at an exhibition approved of Hanoi’s new master zoning plan through 2030 and the vision to 2050, said Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Dinh Toan.



Toan said an average of 84.5 percent of 3,000 answer sheets collected from 6,700 visitors said they agreed with the plan's 15 major points, including developing five satellite towns and putting the city’s heritages under strict preservation.

The plan to establish green corridors gained the highest rate of support, while the one to place a national administrative center around Ba Vi Mountain, some 60 kilometers from the city’s center, received the least amount of approvals, 69.4 percent, he said.

According to the official, since it was opened on April 21, the 11-day exhibition of the General Zoning Plan had welcomed over 16,000 visitors from urban planning experts to high school students.

The ministry said it would report the plan to the National Assembly’s Standing Committee next month to receive more contributions and feedback.

First prepared in December 2008, the US$7-million project is expected to be finalized and submitted to the National Assembly this year.


PV

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Ha Noi master plan under scrutiny
Last update 15:07, Thursday, 03/06/2010 (GMT+7)

source: VietNamNet

VietNamNet Bridge – National Assembly deputies yesterday, June 2, heard a Government report on Ha Noi's master plan for development until 2030 with a vision to 2050 - a document that has presented a number of thorny problems to developers and city planners alike.


The southeastern urban area of Ha Noi. City officials are facing numerous problems when trying to draw up a development master plan for the capital.

Presenting the master plan, Minister of Construction Nguyen Hong Quan said that as forecast in project development, the GDP growth rate of Ha Noi would be approximately 8 per cent between 2020 and 2030, with GDP per capita reaching about US$11,000 in 2030.

In 2030, the population would hit 9 to 9.2 million, and land needed for construction in rural areas would reach between 39,000 and 40,000ha. According to the report, housing spaces in urban areas will rise to more than 30sq.m per person and the urbanisation ratio will be at around 70 per cent.

Under the master plan, the capital will be built in line with a sustainable development model. The core urban centre will be linked with five satellite urban areas and other towns in the surrounding rural areas.

The core urban centre will be formed by the east-west axis of the Thang Long, Highway 32, Lang-Hoa Lac Highway and Highway 6. Of which, the Thang Long axis will connect with Hoang Quoc Viet Road, Highway 21, West Lake and Ba Vi areas. It will become the main traffic axis in the transportation corridor.

The national political centre will also remain in Ba Dinh District. Land has been set aside for development of the Government and administrative offices in Ba Vi until 2050. And the national administrative centre will remain around Hoan Kiem Lake.

Total investment capital for infrastructure development from 2010 to 2030 is approximately $60 billion. Transportation will cost $33.3 billion. By 2050, investments will further increase by $29.9 billion, of which transport will account for $16.8 billion.

According to Quan, by collecting ideas from NA deputies, the Government will require consultant companies to complete master planning before submitting it to the Prime Minister for approval in August.

Mind disturbances

Delivering a report on the collected opinions, chairman of the National Assembly's Economics Commission Ha Van Hien proposed telling the public to be aware of the correct orientation of the master plan so as to avoid disturbances of the mind.

It would also help to avoid unfair advantages and skyrocketing prices in land and real estate. Especially, it should prevent the effects of improper interest groups that could influence the project's direction.

The commission also asked for further clarification on urban space orientation, the new administrative centre and the Thang Long axis, as well as the north-south axis.

The new national administrative centre had raised concern from some deputies, who said that if the administrative centre was moved from Ha Noi to Ba Vi, it might not suit the elements of history, culture and national defence; therefore, the political centre should remain in Ba Dinh District.

Others said that the administrative centre should not be separated from the national political centre. They added that it should be in only one place. Therefore, moving these areas to Ba Vi would be a thorny problem that needed to be thoroughly scrutinised and have a public consensus.

Regarding the $90 billion total investment in infrastructure development from 2010 to 2050, the commission told NA deputies that the calculation should be more carefully considered, based on the work to be done so as to achieve the goals of the plan.

Capital investments in infrastructure development for the master plan needed to be balanced with the total investment capital for the country's other projects such as nuclear power plants and the Ha Noi-HCM City express railway.

To ensure the master plan would be made in a serious manner and would not affect livelihoods, production or investments during the process, the commission also proposed to have separate documents on management regulations of the master plan in accordance with the Law on Urban Planning.

Yesterday morning, NA deputies also heard Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Hong Phuc deliver a report on the revised draft and supplemental decree for some clauses of Resolution 66/2006/QH11, regarding national key projects.

They also heard reports on programmes of the NA on building laws and ordinances for 2011.

Law on minerals

The same day, NA deputies discusses the amended Law on Minerals, focusing on the rights of people living in localities where minerals were exploited.

Deputy Ly Kieu Van from the central province of Quang Tri said that regulations on the rights of people living in localities where minerals were exploited were not clear, so enforcement was not efficient.

The draft law stated that compensation and resettlement for individuals whose land was revoked and used in mineral exploration projects were in line with regulations of the Land Law. Meanwhile, the Land Law was showing many shortcomings and needed to be revised, Van said.

The northern mountainous province of Bac Kan's deputy, Be Xuan Truong, was worried that in most localities that had valuable metal mines, residents were not rich and were suffering through the many consequences of exploitation.

Deputies Phuong Thi Thanh and Chu Le Chinh from the northern mountainous provinces of Bac Kan and Lai Chau said that it was important to have sanctions to force enterprises to take responsibility for local people and the environment, rather than "encouraging" them, as was stated in the draft law.

Deputy Chinh said that mineral exploitation without permission had led to huge losses for the State budget, and had also complicated social issues and degraded infrastructure.

The deputies also reckoned that regulations allowing organisations and individuals to explore minerals for a maximum of 48 months must be changed, as the timeframe was too long and these organisations and individuals could take advantage of the duration to exploit too much minerals.

Deputy Le Viet Truong from southern An Giang Province and deputy Chinh said that the draft law still had many loose regulations, especially those related to licensing mineral exploitation.

These deputies argued that it was not necessary to decentralise the licensing of these activities.

Deputies also agreed with the suggestion of the NA's Economics Committee that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment should be tasked to work out the overall planning of mineral exploration and exploitation.

The planning must match the National Minerals Strategy and the Socio-economic Development Strategy to ensure consistency in minerals management and reasonableness in exploitation activities, and to protect the environment for sustainable development.

Production sectors would use the planning to base their own exploitation plans and to process and use minerals for their own business purposes.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News

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slightly edited version

[81jun]

Is it just a plan??? I see nothing change from my last time visit hanoi.

[KoolKool]

Originally Posted by 81jun

Is it just a plan??? I see nothing change from my last time visit hanoi.

it's actually change very much......and because you didn't visit all place in Hanoi!

[tq]

Ha Noi plans financial centre

Ha Noi is planning to turn the area west of West Lake into a world-class banking and financial centre by 2030.

The 15-ha area would be home to credit organisations, financial and insurance funds and stock exchanges, said Tran Viet Thang from Ha Noi's Planning and Architecture Department at a meeting yesterday.

Additional new trade and financial hubs would also be situated in the capital's northern district of Dong Anh, where an exhibition centre of 50-100ha would be built, and in the south-western area of the city, including My Dinh new urban area, and Pham Hung and Tran Duy Hung streets.

Meanwhile, the traditional trade and financial centre, which now includes Trang Tien and Ly Thai To streets and the surrounding areas, would continue its important role in the city's economy, said Thang.

However no detailed blueprints to turn these plans into reality were released by the Planning and Architecture Department.

"We are waiting for the Ha Noi master plan to 2030 to be approved by the Prime Minister," said Thang.

The city's determination to build its key trade and financial centre was recognised at a municipal People's Council meeting in 2007.

Addressing the meeting, deputy chairman of the municipal People's Committee Hoang Manh Hien said developing the financial, banking and trade systems was the capital city's top priority.

Speaking at the event, Alderman Michael Bear, Lord Mayor of the City of London, said the development of a financial centre in Ha Noi was very important.

"One of the priorities of your Government is what we call equitisation of your State-owned enterprises," he said. "They will need cash and liquidity and your financial centre will help that enormously."

Assistance was also offered from London's financial centre.

"City of London can offer help as we have a deep pool of liquidity," said Bear.

From his experience at the City of London, which is home to half of Europe's investment banks, Bear said a pool of talented people and a business friendly environment, good infrastructure and modern support services, such as 24/7 communication, were key elements needed to develop a major financial centre.

According to Louis Taylor, vice chairman and general director of Standard Chartered Bank Vietnam, key building blocks of world-class financial centres also include open and fair financial markets, free flow of capital and a convertible currency, as well as the prevalent use of a globally familiar language.

A fair, transparent, efficient legal regime, a sound and fair tax regime, and the implementation of international standards and low costs in doing business were also key to such centres, he said.

"And it's important for any centre to have a vision," said Taylor.

The English businessmen saw Ha Noi's great potential. "I see the potential you have to realise your goal to become a very well-recognised city," said Bear.

Taylor said Ha Noi's business environment had evolved a great deal since 2008.

According to him, recent improvements include the adoption of new securities and enterprise laws, an improved credit information system and the one-stop shop that eased the company start-up process.

A decrease in corporate income tax from 28 per cent to 25 per cent, increasing competition in the logistics industry and the application of new customs administration procedures as part of World Trade Organisation membership were also good signs, said Taylor.

Rol.vn - Source: Vietnam News

[tq]

a very nice and comprehensive article.

The Grass Isn't Always Greener

source: Architect - Magazine of of the American Institute of Architects

Commissioned by Vietnam’s Communist party to create a master plan for Hanoi, Perkins Eastman learned that working for an authoritarian regime isn’t as simple as it may seem.

By: Mark Lamster

Hanoi, which celebrated its millennial anniversary just a few months ago, is a palimpsest of cultures and buildings growing off the banks of the Red River, a flood-prone filament that unspools from the mountains of southern China down to the Gulf of Tonkin. It is a city of ancient, wedding-cake pagodas set on haze-shrouded lakes, of looming stone citadels, of tree-lined French colonial boulevards, and of rice farmers tending paddies in conical straw hats. From the right angle and at the right moment, it is almost impossibly picturesque.

Those angles and moments, however, have become increasingly hard to find as Vietnam’s communist government has fitfully liberalized its economy and entered the global marketplace. Hanoi’s streets are now choked by motorized traffic and plagued by the shoddy overbuilding endemic of the developing world. On any given corner, you might see a hornet’s nest of jury-rigged electrical cables, a practically untraceable network of siphoned energy. Walk into a newly constructed building and you’re likely to find a family cooking over an open charcoal fire.

“There aren’t a lot of places you’re going to go in the world where the pure volume of concrete will double in a matter of 15 years,” says James Spencer, a professor of urban planning at the University of Hawaii who specializes in Vietnamese public policy. “Unless planners can meet the demands of that population, the city is heading for some very big environmental problems.”

New York architect L. Bradford Perkins, FAIA, says, “You have to look past an awful lot of chaos to see what’s beautiful about Hanoi, but it’s there. It hasn’t been lost.” His firm, Perkins Eastman, is leading a consortium overseen by Vietnam’s Ministry of Construction that has developed a master plan (shown above) to see Hanoi through to 2050. Sitting behind a broad desk stacked with books and papers on a recent afternoon, he ruminated on the city’s great potential. “They can maintain its character without rushing into the 21st century and losing it the way so many other Asian cities have.”

On the subject of urban planning and development in Asia, Perkins is indisputably expert: It is a field that has interested his family for three generations. His grandfather, the Chicago architect Dwight H. Perkins, FAIA, designed a pair of handsome university campuses in China, in the cities of Jinan and Nanjing, under Sun Yat-sen. (Previously, he had worked as a top deputy at Burnham and Root.) His father, Lawrence B. Perkins, FAIA, was founding principal of Perkins + Will, which is now a frequent competitor with Perkins Eastman on international projects. His brother, the political economist Dwight Perkins, was until recently the director of Harvard University’s Asia Center and has in the past served as a development consultant to the Vietnamese government.

“I vetted everything with my brother,” Perkins says. His expertise was useful, and his contacts and credibility within the Vietnamese government, Perkins believes, helped Perkins Eastman (in collaboration with the Korean firms Posco E&C and Jina Architects, the Vietnamese Institute of Architecture, Urban and Rural Planning, and the Hanoi Urban Planning Institute) win the job over RTKL Associates and a joint bid from Arata Isozaki and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

Certainly, though, Perkins knows the Asian ropes in his own right—he has made 105 trips there (more than 20 of them to Vietnam), and quite literally wrote the book on foreign architectural practice: His primer, International Practice for Architects, was published in 2007. In it he writes, “Vietnam has the potential to be a real market for North American design services.”

The extent to which that potential has been realized has surprised even Perkins, given the troubled history between Vietnam and the United States. “It’s amazing how warmly we’re treated,” he says. The relative youth of the Vietnamese population of 89.6 million accounts for this to some degree; a significant majority is under the age of 35 and therefore has no memory of the war. Hanoi itself came through the war largely intact. The country’s historic tensions with its Asian neighbors, in particular Japan and South Korea, play to the favor of American firms.

It is Vietnam’s youthful and rapidly expanding population that is placing such enormous pressure on its urban centers. Hanoi, the national capital, is at present a city of 6.5 million, but demographers project that number to rise by some 40 percent in the coming decades. To account for the city’s growth, the new master plan will push development out to five satellite cities separated from the historic core by a greenbelt of parks, lakes, and land reserved for agriculture. “Our plan was built around sustainability,” Perkins says. “We’re trying to get Hanoi to recognize they have this wonderful one-time opportunity to do something the Chinese have not done, which is to protect one of the great architectural zones, which runs through the center of the city.”

This new vision is dependent on a radical overhaul of the city’s infrastructure. “The existing system cannot keep up with the pace of the population growth of the city, especially in the ancient quarter,” says Do Dinh Duc, director of Hanoi Architectural University. Essential services such as power and sewage treatment are woefully inadequate even for Hanoi’s current population, never mind what it will be in 10 or 20 years. Residents, for instance, depend on some 10,000 illegal wells for potable water. The new plan would answer that demand with a pair of water-treatment plants. Also among the items the plan calls for: a new light-rail system, a new regional road network, a new international airport, and a vastly improved flood-management system.

If it all sounds enormously ambitious, that’s because it is. “Daniel Burnham’s ‘Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood’? That’s really only possible in a place like Vietnam,” Perkins says. “As a planner, that makes it quite enjoyable. The government has the ability to make big plans. And they really believe that planning matters, and they take it very seriously.”

Indeed, the plan has the strong backing of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, the head of government in a one-party state without a free press. This does not mean, however, that it has been or will remain free of opposition. “When you get there, you realize how hard it is to control anything,” says Paul Buckhurst, a principal at Perkins Eastman who spent 34 weeks in Hanoi during the planning process.

“It’s fairly common for low-income people to protest in front of local authority offices,” Spencer, of the University of Hawaii, says. In the past year alone, some 200 building projects in Hanoi have been halted due to public opposition. “It’s not a system where the state can just do anything.”

Thus far, the new master plan has been fairly well received, according to Perkins, pointing to an 87 percent positive response to an anonymously conducted survey. “In the presentations, people could stand up, and did,” he says. “There was a good deal of pushback.”

The success or failure of the plan will in large measure reside in the team’s continuing ability to satisfy local community groups, many of which are faced with relocation or other significant changes to their traditions and habits. “It’s one thing to define a vision, and another to realize it,” Spencer says. “The vision and the plan can be great technically, but unless you have widespread buy-in and a lot of goodies for people who are existing stakeholders, it’s going to be very difficult.”

Preservation is a particularly challenging issue, and one that has left the team, on occasion, at odds with members of the Vietnamese government. In a rapidly modernizing city with such a mixed architectural heritage—historic Vietnamese, French, and Soviet structures in varying states of distress—there are persistent questions as to what is worth saving. “Every act of preservation is a reinterpretation of what Vietnamese history is,” Spencer says.

If all follows according to plan, by 2050, Hanoi will have emerged as a city on par with London, New York, Moscow, and Tokyo. The path for that growth is now set, but it is only a path. “One of the wonderful things about Hanoi, and one of the reasons it has a chance to be a great world capital, is that it’s just beginning its development,” Perkins says. That, of course, is both its burden and its opportunity.

[utope]

Thank you for this article about Perkins activity in Hanoi.

I was checking the plan you posted too.

If I'm right this is a nez version with small additional details. For instance the famous Thang Long Axis which was completely straight in previous version was adapted here. Also, the famous green belt which is not the green corridor seems to be well designed now. So, can we consider now this plan as the last version?

Thanks in advance for any answer.

Originally Posted by tq

a very nice and comprehensive article.

The Grass Isn't Always Greener

source: Architect - Magazine of of the American Institute of Architects

[tq]

the whole presention of Hanoi's masterplan. very big and compact document:

http://hanoi.org.vn/planning/data/ppj_20100402.pdf

[Jim856796]

If the plans involve devoting over half of the Hanoi area to greenspace, how is that new airport going to be proposed and realised? There are plans to build a brand-new second airport for Hanoi. I have a suggestion: instead of building a new airport, why don't we start from the beginning and reboot the existing Noi Bai Airport? Get rid of all the existing infrastructure and put in a brand-new larger passenger terminal (larger than the current one) and 2 new runways in its place?

And is this overall expansion a "rebooting" of Hanoi, or something else?