HANOI – Experts and officials at a seminar on urban development in Hanoi on Saturday called for a new approach to urbanization management in the capital city by increasing land reserves to choke off property fevers there.
Pham Sy Liem, director of the Urban Research and Infrastructure Development Institute, remarked that land fevers often took place soon after any urban planning schemes were announced. Recent fevers in new urban areas of Duong Noi, An Khanh, and even in the farming area of Ba Vi indicated that current urban land management has failed, he said.
“Therefore, to fight land manipulators and to make the most from land for development, urban administrators need to build up land reserves right at the time they make any urban planning scheme,” Liem told the seminar.
He asserted that land reserves would provide a strong vehicle for the urban administrator to manage the property market in urban areas, adding “it is high time the country formulate a complete institutional mechanism on land reserves.”
The new mechanism, according to Liem, will help prevent the situation of land prices being chased up year after year while people affected by development projects are still unhappy with the rising compensations.
Duong Duc Tuan, deputy director of Hanoi City’s Department of Planning and Architecture, agreed to Liem’s viewpoint, saying land reserves were the basic resource for urban development in the capital city.
Those areas with ample land reserves would have better conditions for infrastructure development, especially for projects under the forms of Build-Transfer and Build-Operate-Transfer forms, he said.
Dang Hung Vo, former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, stressed the need to improve land management to avoid corruption in the sector.
“We must look for strong methods to manage land under planning schemes, otherwise some people will gain hefty profits from land manipulation while others will suffer when their land is revoked for development projects,” Vo said.
He added that urban land must be seen as capital resources, so a right approach to urban planning would be the decisive factor to determine urban development.
Liem of the Urban Research and Infrastructure Development Institute said that the development of land reserves would also help collect most benefits from land for the State budget.
Under the master plan on urban development between now and 2025 with a vision to 2050 that was approved by the Prime Minister last year, there should have some 910 urban towns and cities in the country by 2020. The population in cities should reach 44 million, or 45% of the country’s population by then.
