"Smart cities would provide a better quality of life for citizens while ensuring environmental protection and economic growth with the application of the latest achievements in information technology," said Senior Director of Smart & Connected Communities of Cisco Systems, Mrinalini Ingram Bio.
The conference was co-organised by the Ministry of Construction, the Ministry of Information and Communications and Cisco Systems International to discuss opportunities and challenges for sustainable urban development in Viet Nam.
"Building economically, environmentally-friendly and socially sustainable cities nation wide is a huge challenge as well as unique opportunity for Viet Nam," Nam emphasised.
The current urbanisation rate was about 31 per cent and was forecast to reach 50 per cent of the total population by 2040, boosting demand for the development of smart cities, Bio added.
Do Tu Lan, deputy director of the Ministry of Construction's Urban Development Department, said the number of urban cities and towns in the country had increased from 629 in 1999 to 755 in 2011.
However, Viet Nam's cities still struggled with numerous issues, including unco-ordinated infrastructure, a lack of housing, trees, power and water, traffic congestion and urban flooding, Lan said.
With the current yearly growth rate of urban populations reaching 3.4 per cent, an additional 100 million sq.m of housing must be built every year to meet the demand, according to Director of Housing and Real Estate Management Department Nguyen Manh Ha.
"The initiative would be the solution to help take Viet Nam to the next level of building better cities for better quality of life," said Bio.
Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Minh Hong emphasised the significance of applying information technology in urban construction, development and management.
"The synchronised planning of telecommunications infrastructure is an essential vision for smart cities," he said.
Throughout the world, the model of smart and connected cities has been successfully adopted in Songdo and Incheon in South Korea; Shanghai in China; Shah Alam in Malaysia; Florida and New York in the US, and is under ongoing development.
The central city of Da Nang had been taking initial steps towards development of a smart and connected city, said director of the Da Nang People's Committee's Information and Communications Department Pham Kim Son.
"The city is oriented to become a connected city with the initiatives of developing a metropolitan area network as well as smart control systems for waste water, traffic, food safety and sanitation and natural disaster alerts," he said.
"Hopefully, the initiative will be successfully applied in Viet Nam to build better urban areas for the sake of the citizens," Nam said.
VNS