Mid Review - Introduction

A VISION FOR THE RED RIVER DELTA AND GREATER HANOI...

The city of Hanoi is presently facing incredible challenges related to growth: The existing urban core is well beyond its carrying capacity and infrastructure provision can simply not keep pace with urban transformations underway.

Simultaneously, there are significant challenges related to water resources: The threat posed by flooding in urban areas due to climate change and the associated rise in sea level is potentially catastrophic. In addition, there is the issue of deteriorating quality of water (rivers, canals and lakes) in and around the city.

Administratively, the city recently altered its boundaries, effectively tripling the area in question, presumably in a bid to address the question of expansion of the city. This action in itself, however seems to have sparked off a series of related events: Land use alteration (from agricultural to urban), spiraling property values, speculative property holding, increased rural-urban migration, rampant development...

Presently, the new city boundary caters for a population of 6.2 million inhabitants; Projections have it that by 2030, this number will rise to 10 million, and 15 million by 2050.

The expansion of Hanoi is therefore clearly underway, and the recent administrative alterations may just have accelerated this phenomenon. The force of urbanisation in this context is simply unstoppable. What remains crucial is the manner in which the city (and the Red River Delta at large) prepares itself to accommodate and structure the imminent.

It is well known that Hanoi has been historically structured by its contextual landscape elements- the mountains and the water. Important to note however, is the fact that the city, in its contemporary form of development, seems to have completely lost its landscape heritage, a component fundamental to its very existence as part of the Red River Delta.

Further to this, the conventional master planning approach has- time and again- proved insufficient to accommodate the growth of the city. In light of this, it is highly unlikely that yet another new master plan will address the challenges facing the city.

Consequently, therefore, is it possible to revisit landscape infrastructure as a tool to guide growth and development in Hanoi and beyond? If so, what landscape elements would be best suited to structure this expansion? What forms would these elements take, and what possibilities do they offer the Delta?

Following is a set of visions that investigate possible roles that landscape infrastructure could play in sustainable development, at the scale of the Red River Delta and Greater Hanoi.