Wednesday, 23 April 2008

Seminar mulls sustainable urban development

17:23' 23/04/2008 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge - Domestic and foreign experts in urban development, architecture, housing, transport, finance and environment fields have convened in Hanoi on April 22 for a seminar on sustainable urban development.
The seminar initiated by the Construction Ministry is aimed to help Vietnam better deal with problems caused by the ongoing urbanisation process.
Foreign experts from the Republic of Korea and Australia spoke of their experiences in urban development, before the focus turned to how Vietnam should work towards sustainable development in the coming years.
Participants discussed and laid out targets and criteria on the issues of training personnel for urban management and development, urban economy and housing development, society development and opportunities for urban low-income people, infrastructure development, and environment quality improvement.
According to the Construction Ministry, the urbanisation process in Vietnam is developing so fast with differences between urban and rural areas growing quickly.
The ministry gave one example of disorderly development, that the country has about 200 industrial, export processing and border gate economic zones operational but 70 percent of them have not built and put into use their waste water treatment systems.
The infrastructure development has not kept pace with the economic development due to the fact that investment capital is dependent on the State budget or foreign aids, said the ministry. There were big challenges in large cities, such as lack of housing, traffic jams, epidemics, natural disaster and environmental pollution.
Harmony between socio-economic development and environment protection was necessary to obtain a sustainable development, said Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Van Lien.
The Government strategy on Vietnam’s sustainable development is a framework of directions for ministries, agencies and localities to implement, as well as Vietnam ’s commitment to the target, he said.
Under the instruction of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Construction will build up a master plan for urban development by 2025.

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