Vietnam, officially Socialist Republic of Vietnam, occupies the eastern and southern part of the Indochinese peninsula in Southeast Asia, with the Gulf of Thailand, Gulf of Tonkin, and South China Sea along its 3,444 km coastline. China is to the north and Laos and Cambodia are to the west. Long and narrow on a north-south axis, Vietnam has a total land area of 325,360 sq km. The terrain consists of low, flat deltas in south and north; central highlands; and hilly, mountainous areas in far north and northwest. The Mekong River delta lies in the south. Natural resources include phosphates, coal, manganese, bauxite, chromate, offshore oil and gas deposits, forests, hydropower. The land area divides up into arable land: 19.97%, permanent crops: 5.95% and other: 74.08% (2001). The country has a tropical monsoon climate, modified by local conditions.

: Map of Vietnam and its neighbours

Key Environamental Issues

Logging and slash-and-burn agricultural practices contribute to deforestation and soil degradation; water pollution and overfishing threaten marine life populations; groundwater contamination limits potable water supply; growing urban industrialization and population migration are rapidly degrading environment in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Society

Total population is 83,535,576 and population growth rate is 1.04% (2005 est.).
Ethnic Vietnamese constitute about 90% of Vietnam's population. Approximately 2.3 million ethnic Chinese, concentrated mostly in southern Vietnam, constitute Vietnam's largest minority group. The second-largest ethnic minority grouping is the central highland peoples commonly termed Montagnards (mountain people). About 50 minority groups of various cultures and dialects are spread over the highland territory. The third-largest minority, the Khmer Krom, numbering about 600,000, is concentrated near the Cambodian border and at the mouth of the Mekong River.
Vietnamese is the official language of the country. A mix of Buddhism, Confucianism, and traditional local beliefs and Roman Catholicism are the most widely practiced religions.

Government

The capital is Hanoi. Administrative divisions are made of 59 provinces and 5 municipalities (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Hai Phong, Da Nang, Can Tho).
Under the constitution the Socialist Republic of Vietnam 1992, the National Assembly acts as the highest representative body of the people with legislative powers. Its members hold office for 5 years and conduct 2 annual sessions. While the President functions as head of state, the Government, headed by the Prime Minister and assisted by the various ministries, is the National Assembly's executive arm. At local level, the People's Council is the local legislative body with the People's Committee as the executive branch. In the government structure, the local People's Councils of provinces and cities are under direct central rule.

Economy

Land reform, de-collectivization, and the opening of the agricultural sector to market forces converted Vietnam from a country facing chronic food shortages in the early 1980s to the second-largest rice exporter in the world. The Mekong and Red River deltas are among the world's greatest rice-growing regions. Besides rice, key exports are coffee, tea, rubber, and fisheries products. Despite this unquestioned success story, agriculture's share of economic output has declined, falling as a share of GDP from 42% in 1989 to 21% in 2005 (est.), as production in other sectors of the economy has risen, industry: 40.9%, services: 38.1% (2005 est.). Industries include food processing, garments, shoes, machine-building, mining, cement, chemical fertilizer, glass, tires, oil, coal, steel, paper… Foreign direct investment is a new and dynamic feature of Vietnam's industrializing economy. Major export partners are US 20.2%, Japan 13.6%, China 9%, Australia 7%, Germany 5.9%, Singapore 4.8%, UK 4.6% (2004). Major import partners are: China 13.7%, Taiwan 11.3%, South Korea 10.8%, Japan 10.5%, Singapore 10.5%, Thailand 6.2%, Hong Kong 4% (2004).

Socio-Economic Planning

Central government formulated the 10-year Socio-Economic Policy and Strategy document providing the overall development direction of the country. The said document defines the goals to be attained within the 10-year period and how these are to be achieved, prescribes the development approaches and strategies and serves as the basis for the formulation of sectoral and local development plans. From this document, sectoral long-term strategies such as those for transportation, energy, telecommunication and tourism have been developed.
Formulated under the national long-term development strategy, the 5-year socio-economic development plan provides the basis for the preparation and approval of annual plans and instrument for determining development investment priorities. This 5-year plan serves as basis for the preparation of provincial and city development plans.

Urban and Regional Planning System

Urban planning (also referred to as urban development planning or urban construction planning in Vietnam) is an essential tool for the spatial arrangement of land uses in cities and urban areas. It is a spatial expression of socio-economic development strategies and policies. The role of spatial planning has become more important as the country changed from a centrally planned economy to an oriented market economy. The various forms of spatial planning, which have been practiced since 1954, are divided into three linked categories as described in the followings:

Regional planning: identify potential development, resources and forces driving the development of a region and its urban and settlement system.
City master planning: form the layout of spatial structure and guidelines for urban development for 15-20 years in long term and 5-10 years in short term.
Detailed planning: determine the lands uses of specific urban space.

: Urban and Regional Planning System in Vietnam

Government Decree 91/CP of 17 August 1994 set a general framework for managing urban planning of Viet Nam's cities. The establishment and approval of urban planning are regulated as the followings:

Urban renewal and development must be based on urban plans approved by competent state authorities.
Urban plans must be set up by professional organizations recognized by the State, and subjected to all standards and rules issued by the State. Approved urban plans are legal basis for managing urban areas, implementing construction programs, preparing annual-short term-long term plans for urban renewal and development.
Approved urban plans must be informed to the public and subjected to necessary adjustments during implementation process to conform to practical development.
City master plans define the guidelines for urban development, infrastructure and living environment. They are mapped on a 1/2,000-1/25,000 scale depending on the classification of cities.
Detailed plans are mapped on a 1/500-1/2,000 scale, under the guidelines of city master plans, and provide the basis for all constructions including housing, public buildings, parks, infrastructure, factories, etc... Approved detailed plans are the basis for setting up investment projects, choosing and approving construction location and issuing planning certificates, deciding on land allocation and issuing building permissions.

Planning certificate and building permission are two approaches for urban development control in Vietnam cities:
Planning certificate is the document that stipulates what developers have to follow when preparing investment or construction project. Development control using planning certificate is effective to developments invested by public and formal sector (detailed plan will be prepared by developers in accordance with master plan).
Building permission is the document that mainly applied for individual building construction. Developers are required to submit a detailed architectural and technical design of the project, which is subjected to examination based on regulations on construction management attached in detailed plan. Development control using building permission, therefore, is effective only when detailed plan is available.

Urban System

According to the master plan of Vietnam urban system through 2020, there are 10 featured urbanization regions:

Red River Delta and Northern Key Economic Region
Southern and South-Eastern Key Economic Region
Central Key Economic Region
Mekong River Delta Region
South Central Region
Central Highlands Region
North Central Region
East Northern Region
Middle Northern Region
West Northern Region

This official plan encourages urbanization in smaller settlements, rather than the dominant national cities. The urban system will compose of two national "megacities" (Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi), three smaller national cities (Hai Phong, Da Nang, Hue), eleven regional cities, 70 provincial cities, 547 district towns by 2020 with a total population of 46 million which will raise the urbanization level up to 45%.

In January 2001, the Ministry of Construction (MOC) put forward the following objectives for urban development in Vietnam:

Decreasing densities in urban cores of large cities and increasing peri-urban densities, possibly through development of satellite cities.
Relocating polluting factories from inner cities to outer areas through tax incentives and regulation.
Stemming squatter settlements through formulation and enactment of construction standards and enforcement of codes.
Improving provision of urban services
Implementing measures to increase supply of urban housing
Reducing loss of prime agricultural land resulting from poorly managed peri-urban development.

Urban Planning Issues

Lack of horizontal coordination among agencies.
High levels of centralization, and reliance on planning the settlement system by fiat (command and control), rather than a performance based approach that would focus urban initiatives and performance monitoring on emerging and fast-growing settlements.
High population densities in the largest cities (80,000 per square kilometer in core Ho Chi Minh City) in conjunction with large numbers of industrial firms (often high polluters) and inadequate environmental infrastructure.
Inconsistencies between national plans and local plans. For example, the Ho Chi Minh City Mater Plan is based on a population of seven million in 2020 (a level which may have already been reached) while the MOC urbanization forecasts would imply a population of 13-19 million by 2020.
Lack of a clear national urbanization strategy / urban policy framework, exacerbated by uncoordinated divergent technical assistance on urbanization from the international community.
The continued presence of manufacturing firms (often heavy and/or polluting industries) in core urban areas. This limits land available for higher value urban uses.

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