Vietnam has 755 urban zones as of 2011-end

News - Till the end of 2011, Vietnam had 755 urban zones, increasing 126 urban zones compared to 1999. Thus, after over recent 10 years, averagely, Vietnam has about 12 new urban zones annually and many old urban zones expanded scale, according to the statistics from Vietnamese Ministry of Construction (MoC).

Ms Phan Thi My Linh, head of Urban Development Department under MoC, said that in recent years, Vietnam's urban development is too fast.

Currently, Vietnam has two special urban zones namely Hanoi and HCM City, 10 urban zones type I, 12 urban zones type II, 47 urban zones type III, 50 urban zones type IV and 634 urban zones type V.

According to the decentralisation of urban management, there are five central cities, 55 provincial cities, 40 provincial towns and the remainders are towns, excluding 630 new urban areas with a total acreage of 100,000 hectares.

For over past decade, the ratio of permanent houses increased from 12.8 percent to 46.77 percent, the simple houses decreased from 22.6 percent to 7.4 percent and the housing area per capita increased from 9.7 square metre floor per person to 18.6 sqm floor per person.

However, the land area ratio for urban transport reached only 13 percent of the land area for urban construction (lower than the requirement by 20-25 percent) and the land area ratio for static transport (parking area) was less than 1 percent of the land area for urban construction (while the requirement is 3-3.5 percent).

According to Linh, the current urban development growth rate has been beyond the management capacity of the local governments. The management capacity of urban development did not match the real demands. The phenomenon of traffic congestion and accident, flooding and pollution are still concerns in urban zones.