Hanoi Master Plan ‘bad news’ to numerous projects

Hanoi Master Plan has been approved

Works on these projects will have to stop to wait for the results on assessment on their suitability to the capital city’s new plan, according to Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Hong Quan.

Quan shared that all these projects had already been approved before Hanoi was expanded since August 1, 2008.

Hundreds of projects are facing the possibility of being cancelled, as they are located in the city’s ‘green corridor’, which separates the inner city from satellite urban areas.

Authorities are trying to come up with ways to deal with the projects that will be cancelled.

Architect Dao Ngoc Nghiem, former director of Hanoi Department of Architecture and Planning warned about the losses to be incurred if the projects are cancelled.

Part of the purpose of the "green corridor" is to stymie migration into the city’s centre, Nghiem revealed.

This is not the first time that Hanoi has had to stop a number of projects for scrutiny. The assesment resulted in the cancellation of a large number of projects in the west of Hanoi.

Nghiem worried about the impacts such a large-scale cancellation would have on the realty market; as the last round of cancellations led to great squander.

The situation has triggered public concern over shortcomings in the master plan.

Many scientists, architects and planning experts complained about overlapping in the urban planning of Hanoi at a recent seminar in the capital in early July.

“Hanoi was expanded on August 1, 2008. Just four months later, the Prime Minister approved a general vision for the design of a new urban plan for Hanoi. Work on this plan began in early 2009. Last year, Hanoi started gathering experts’ ideas. This means that it took only one year of study, and one and half a year for the collection of ideas and the amendment to the plan. This amount of time is too short for such a long-term master plan," he said.

According to Nghiem, in order to build infrastructure to link the inner city with satellite urban areas, experts estimated that Hanoi would have to mobilise between $60-100 billion. However, in his point of view, in reality, the figure may be even higher.

He suggests that in the future the city should give strategic priority to certain projects in order to work out which should be carried out first. He added that more efforts should be put into managing the population of the city.