ncr
18-11-06, 11:04 PM
Ho Chi Minh City hurries to become a megacity (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/17/news/saigon.php) - International Herald Tribune, 17 November 2006
HO CHI MINH CITY: Meet the world's next great metropolis, a once-gracious city bursting from the confines of its history, wide-eyed with the wonders of traffic jams and tall buildings and thinking very, very big. Held back by a half-century of war and privation, it is charging forward with gigantic plans for urban expansion and development, determined to seize what it is certain is its rightful place as a world leader. "We are in a good position and determined to build a whole new Ho Chi Minh City," said Nguyen Trong Hoa, director of the city's department of urban planning and architecture. "We want to become the biggest city in Vietnam and be the center of Asean," the grouping of 12 Southeast Asian nations, he said, "and be the center of Asia and the center of the world as well." [Aren't they modest!]
His words might apply to the entire nation, which this weekend is throwing open its doors at a summit meeting in Hanoi that has acquired the all-but-official title of Vietnam's coming-out party. Leaders of 21 nations, including President George W. Bush, are gathering for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that also will be a celebration of Vietnam's induction next month into the World Trade Organization. That step, after years of negotiations, has bolstered ambitions here in the country's economic center to draw a new wave of investors from around the world.
Ho Chi Minh City, which produces more than one-fourth of the country's gross domestic product and industrial production and which pays nearly one- third of its taxes, "will become a hub of industry, services, science and technology in Southeast Asia," according to its official Web site. Many Vietnamese are certain that this would have happened long ago if, like the bustling Asian tigers that surround it, the Vietnamese economy had not been dragged down by war, economic sanctions and the hobbles of a command economy. Now the country is in a hurry, in the old Soviet phrase, to catch up and overtake its neighbors, and Ho Chi Minh City intends to lead the way. Over the next two decades, this hyperkinetic city of seven million people is planning to expand its population by up to 50 percent, spreading its borders into the surrounding swampland.
An entire sub-city called Saigon South is emerging on reclaimed land along the southern edge of town, and a vast new center is planned on undeveloped land across the Saigon River to the east. With plans for a new port and a new airport, for bridges, highways and a subway system and for an urban makeover of high-rise buildings, the city once known as Saigon has embarked on one of the most ambitious programs of urban renewal anywhere. Sewage and garbage collection services are being revamped at a projected cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. A tunnel is being dug beneath the Saigon River. A latticework of bus and tram routes has been mapped out.
"With the changes they are talking about, we can expect that in the next 10 years we will be seeing a completely different city," said Ayumi Konishi, the Vietnam country director for the Asian Development Bank. "It is certainly becoming one of the Asian megacities," he said. "The scale of things being talked about is just amazing, but probably necessary." But like the quieter capital city of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City is trying to resist the helter-skelter development that has robbed chaotic Asian cities like Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila of much of their character. It has not yet decided, though, which way it wants to go, how much to weigh old-world charm against 21st-century aggressiveness. For people who feel they have been left behind by a fast-changing world, the big, the bold and the brassy can feel like hallmarks of class. "The city is not yet sure of its own identity," said Nguyen Van Tat, an architect who is deputy editor of Beautiful Home magazine. "For some developers, modernity is the next step in the city's development. "For them, the Singapore model is very attractive, very clear, very obvious, easy to understand. For me, it would be very hard to accept that that is the final fate of Saigon."
It was in the 1860s that French colonists laid out the grids and began to build the shady city that came to be known as the Pearl of the Orient. City officials are now redefining it for the next century or more, and the question is how much of old Saigon will remain. "A city is like a human being," Tat said. "It needs to have a past. There is a saying in Vietnam that even if the pages are frayed, a book must still have its spine." Already the city's pages are fraying. As Vietnam's economy opened fitfully over the past decade and a half, developers seized their moment to coarsen some of the elegance of the city center with faceless office buildings. The skyline was fouled with undistinguished structures including two dozen incongruous skyscrapers.
But projects like this are now the subject of debate, most recently a proposed 53-story tower that would devour a park and overshadow one of the city's landmarks, the central market. At one point, a Taiwanese developer was offering $500 million for the site, a very hard sum to turn down. And there are some officials who like the aesthetics of the idea, a landmark for the new century, signaling the city's thrust into the future. The city's emerging plan calls for most tall buildings to be concentrated in the new center to be created across the river. But that is still years away, and the demands of developers, along with the city's hunger for modernity, may overwhelm aesthetics. Bold plans for transportation systems and for underground parking garages are only at the starting point - too late to avoid the traffic gridlock that has almost overnight become a new feature of the city. According to the city's figures, there are 400,000 cars on the roads, along with three million small motorbikes. As the economy surges, the balance will tilt toward autos, and using a rule of thumb, each car waiting at a stoplight will take up the space of six motorbikes.
It is much easier to start fresh, of course, and Ho Chi Minh City is blessed with broad areas for expansion. For city planners, Saigon South is a model for the future, a 3,100-hectare, or 7,600- acre, project that is managed by a Taiwanese company, Central Trading and Development Group. A fully furnished city, it will come complete with shopping malls, hotels, schools, hospitals, scientific institutes, food courts, a small golf course, offices, a convention center, an industrial park, apartments and housing developments. Neat, clean and orderly, it is a futuristic Saigon, leached of its history. The fresh face of Saigon South is probably historically inevitable, uncannily similar to the version of a modern Vietnam that was created by refugees as Little Saigon in Southern California. In its newer districts, it might be said, big Saigon is being transformed into a big Little Saigon.
HO CHI MINH CITY: Meet the world's next great metropolis, a once-gracious city bursting from the confines of its history, wide-eyed with the wonders of traffic jams and tall buildings and thinking very, very big. Held back by a half-century of war and privation, it is charging forward with gigantic plans for urban expansion and development, determined to seize what it is certain is its rightful place as a world leader. "We are in a good position and determined to build a whole new Ho Chi Minh City," said Nguyen Trong Hoa, director of the city's department of urban planning and architecture. "We want to become the biggest city in Vietnam and be the center of Asean," the grouping of 12 Southeast Asian nations, he said, "and be the center of Asia and the center of the world as well." [Aren't they modest!]
His words might apply to the entire nation, which this weekend is throwing open its doors at a summit meeting in Hanoi that has acquired the all-but-official title of Vietnam's coming-out party. Leaders of 21 nations, including President George W. Bush, are gathering for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that also will be a celebration of Vietnam's induction next month into the World Trade Organization. That step, after years of negotiations, has bolstered ambitions here in the country's economic center to draw a new wave of investors from around the world.
Ho Chi Minh City, which produces more than one-fourth of the country's gross domestic product and industrial production and which pays nearly one- third of its taxes, "will become a hub of industry, services, science and technology in Southeast Asia," according to its official Web site. Many Vietnamese are certain that this would have happened long ago if, like the bustling Asian tigers that surround it, the Vietnamese economy had not been dragged down by war, economic sanctions and the hobbles of a command economy. Now the country is in a hurry, in the old Soviet phrase, to catch up and overtake its neighbors, and Ho Chi Minh City intends to lead the way. Over the next two decades, this hyperkinetic city of seven million people is planning to expand its population by up to 50 percent, spreading its borders into the surrounding swampland.
An entire sub-city called Saigon South is emerging on reclaimed land along the southern edge of town, and a vast new center is planned on undeveloped land across the Saigon River to the east. With plans for a new port and a new airport, for bridges, highways and a subway system and for an urban makeover of high-rise buildings, the city once known as Saigon has embarked on one of the most ambitious programs of urban renewal anywhere. Sewage and garbage collection services are being revamped at a projected cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. A tunnel is being dug beneath the Saigon River. A latticework of bus and tram routes has been mapped out.
"With the changes they are talking about, we can expect that in the next 10 years we will be seeing a completely different city," said Ayumi Konishi, the Vietnam country director for the Asian Development Bank. "It is certainly becoming one of the Asian megacities," he said. "The scale of things being talked about is just amazing, but probably necessary." But like the quieter capital city of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City is trying to resist the helter-skelter development that has robbed chaotic Asian cities like Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila of much of their character. It has not yet decided, though, which way it wants to go, how much to weigh old-world charm against 21st-century aggressiveness. For people who feel they have been left behind by a fast-changing world, the big, the bold and the brassy can feel like hallmarks of class. "The city is not yet sure of its own identity," said Nguyen Van Tat, an architect who is deputy editor of Beautiful Home magazine. "For some developers, modernity is the next step in the city's development. "For them, the Singapore model is very attractive, very clear, very obvious, easy to understand. For me, it would be very hard to accept that that is the final fate of Saigon."
It was in the 1860s that French colonists laid out the grids and began to build the shady city that came to be known as the Pearl of the Orient. City officials are now redefining it for the next century or more, and the question is how much of old Saigon will remain. "A city is like a human being," Tat said. "It needs to have a past. There is a saying in Vietnam that even if the pages are frayed, a book must still have its spine." Already the city's pages are fraying. As Vietnam's economy opened fitfully over the past decade and a half, developers seized their moment to coarsen some of the elegance of the city center with faceless office buildings. The skyline was fouled with undistinguished structures including two dozen incongruous skyscrapers.
But projects like this are now the subject of debate, most recently a proposed 53-story tower that would devour a park and overshadow one of the city's landmarks, the central market. At one point, a Taiwanese developer was offering $500 million for the site, a very hard sum to turn down. And there are some officials who like the aesthetics of the idea, a landmark for the new century, signaling the city's thrust into the future. The city's emerging plan calls for most tall buildings to be concentrated in the new center to be created across the river. But that is still years away, and the demands of developers, along with the city's hunger for modernity, may overwhelm aesthetics. Bold plans for transportation systems and for underground parking garages are only at the starting point - too late to avoid the traffic gridlock that has almost overnight become a new feature of the city. According to the city's figures, there are 400,000 cars on the roads, along with three million small motorbikes. As the economy surges, the balance will tilt toward autos, and using a rule of thumb, each car waiting at a stoplight will take up the space of six motorbikes.
It is much easier to start fresh, of course, and Ho Chi Minh City is blessed with broad areas for expansion. For city planners, Saigon South is a model for the future, a 3,100-hectare, or 7,600- acre, project that is managed by a Taiwanese company, Central Trading and Development Group. A fully furnished city, it will come complete with shopping malls, hotels, schools, hospitals, scientific institutes, food courts, a small golf course, offices, a convention center, an industrial park, apartments and housing developments. Neat, clean and orderly, it is a futuristic Saigon, leached of its history. The fresh face of Saigon South is probably historically inevitable, uncannily similar to the version of a modern Vietnam that was created by refugees as Little Saigon in Southern California. In its newer districts, it might be said, big Saigon is being transformed into a big Little Saigon.