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Urbanisation: What are the Social Impacts of the Plan to Expand the Capital Hanoi on Lives of People living in the Merged Provinces?

The Vietnamese government has passed a project to expand the capital Hanoi in the next 40 years. In fact, this project has been put into practice. As part of the plan, some districts of two neighbour provinces and the whole area of another neighbour province have been merged to the current area of Hanoi since the 1^st August, 2008. This historical change in territory is likely to exert enormous impacts on lives of people living in the merged provinces.

According to the Ministry of Construction, the main purposes of this plan are to provide conditions to exploit the capital’s potentials so that it will become one of the urban centers in the South East Asia and to solve key problems of the capital such as overpopulation, environmental pollution and disorderly accommodation. To achieve these purposes, the area of the capital has been planned to expand 3.6 times from the current area of 912 km² to about 3,300 km² in 2008 and will be expanded 14 times in the next 40 years. At the 2008 stage, the plan will focus on developing economic and industrial centers, traffic and transportation systems and apartment complexes in various parts of the “new” capital. Before implementation, this plan was subject of great controversy among citizens as well as those in authorities over its practicability and the dramatic changes it might bring about in the spheres such as administration, culture and town planning. One of the central matters in this controversy was the social impacts of the plan on lives of people currently living in rural areas which have been planned to develop into towns.

In my opinion, there will be three significant impacts on the lives of these people.

In the first place, they will have more access to public services such as formal education, health care and telecommunication. Planning to develop these places into urban areas, the government must build more hospitals, schools and telecommunication infrastructure. In terms of public services, the standard of living in these places will be improved.

In the second place, their economic life is certain to be influenced. Most people in these rural areas are working in agricultural sector, in which soil is a basic means of production. However, with the development of new towns, the area of agricultural land is to be decreased considerably. The government needs large areas to construct industrial centers, apartment complexes and transportation systems. Another reason is that many people in these areas are tempted by huge profits of selling land because once becoming parts of the capital, the price of land here will certainly increase higher and higher. In the case of the people who must give their land to the government for future construction, though they are given compensation, it cannot replace the land to generate income for in the long term. What will happen next after they have spent all of the compensation? Furthermore, most of these people are not professional or trained laborers. Therefore, they will have little employment chances or will have to work in positions with low wages in new industries in their areas. In this way, they are put under risk of poverty in the future.

In the third place, their cultural life will be affected. Having a rustic lifestyle since childhood, these rural people are to be influenced by the streams of popular culture of cities? Will they be flooded? Or will they be dislocated? Besides, as part of town planning, people in some areas will be relocated to new habitations. This will damage the traditional relationship among people in villages and related community activities such as cultural rituals and festivals and traditional handicraft industries.

In conclusion, with the expansion of the capital Hanoi, one the one hand, people in the rural districts of merged provinces will benefit from better public services. On the other hand, they may be put under risk of poverty and affected by revolutionary culture changes.

Reference:

-         Trang An Nguyen. 2008. “Vung Thu do Ha Noi se rong 13.436 km², gom 8 tinh, TP” (“Hanoi capital region will be 13.436km², including 8 provinces and cities”). Vietnamnet, March 3^rd, 09:19.

http://www.vnn.vn/xahoi/2008/03/772387/