About 1.000 deputies including 200 foreigner deputies who were leaders of city’s departments and agencies, groups, and enterprises from APEC economies such as American, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Philippine, Hongkong, Taiwan, Peru, Chile,… attended the Forum.
On Vietnamese side, Deputy Minister of MoC Phan Thi My Linh accompanied with leaders of functional departments and agencies under MoC and leaders of cities Cantho, Rach gia, My Tho, and some construction consultant enterprises participated the Forum.
The APEC High – level Urbanization Forum scene
At the Ministerial level conference in June/ 2nd/2016, the leaders had presented efforts on the national and regional level to promote healthy urbanization process which contributed to national growth and improved international cooperation, particularly emphasized on the role of digital technology, database technology and areas connection.
Mrs Linh gave a speed to share experiences of urban development policies that have been successfully implemented in Vietnam as a developing country. After nearly 30 years of DOI MOI (Renovation) policy, there have been positive achievements made in urban development closely linked with economic growth and quality of life improvement.
For achieving the above mentioned results, many policy measures have been taken, as the follows:
Firstly, the Government has enacted the Orientations of Urban Master Plan of Vietnam. The revised version of the urban master plan in 2009 (based on the first issuance in 1998) provided the road map for the national urban system, upon which the regions and provinces have further concretized by means of regional and provincial development plans and other specialized plans. This orientation has helped guiding the urban development at local level and ensure coordination at national level.
Secondly, Vietnam has been consistent in pursuring the target of economic growth in parallel with social security. The Government has developed an Urban Upgrading Program 2009 with funding mainly coming from the state budget and ODA sources. The projects under program have paid attention to improvement of low – income areas, infrastructure connecting these areas with the urban systems. So far, there have been nearly 10 million urban residents who have directly or indirectly benefited from the program.
Thirdly, Vietnam has transformed ideological to apply model “State and people partnership”and promotion of the social organizations. With the approach, the Housing Support program for the poor was implemented for 500.000 households in rural areas…
Deputy Minister Linh said the Urban Development in Vietnam is now facing with objective and subjective difficulties and challenges including diversified and unforeseeable impacts of the climate change, incresing competition of the national economy in the integration of the global economy, bottlenecks in areal expansion in urban development, economic growth model, urban management decentralization; poor urban-rural infrastructure linkages.
These challenges mentioned above are common for urbanization in Viet Nam and in many developing countries in Asian-Pacific region. Moreover, the reality has shown that we are linked and related to each other much more than we have thought. Every action we take in our cities and towns could affect others across the ocean in many ways. Thus, we should always “think globally, act locally” to ensure glocal benefits.
Deputy Minister Linh supposed some topics with regard to coordination of activities of APEC countries: (i) knowledge development on climate change responsiveness; (ii) support for overcoming adverse effects from climate change; (iii) sharing information, experience on urban resilience.
Mrs Linh hoped and wished the first APEC High – level Urbannization Forum 2016 in China would be a good start for cooperation of Asian – Pacific countries.
Next year, Vietnam will be hosting the APEC 2017 Meetings with a full year working program, which will cultimate with the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Da Nang. APEC Economic Leaders are warmly invited to visit Vietnam as well as great cities as Hanoi capital, Hochiminh, Danang, Haiphong, Cantho…
The Forum had taken place the symposium sessions on technical infrastructure, internet technology city, sustainable urban development, efficiency energy, environment protection, urban improvement, creative urbanization, small and medium urban development… On Vietnamese side, Mr Tran Quoc Thai – Deputy Director of Urban Development Agency had presented “Progess on Vietnam Urbanization – Experiences and Practical Lessons”.
Source: Electronic Construction Newspaper
Translated by: Mai Anh