Urban Green Areas – their functions under a changing lifestyle of ...

The following overlapping and interacting factors and developments have to be taken into
consideration, although they are not the most important ones.
Maintenance costs of UGAs:
One cannot usually earn any money through UGAs, it is public space and (local) people
like and need to use the parks. But maintenance causes costs. Even if an entrance fee is
charged, the fees do not cover the whole costs. UGAs are always in deficit. Thus there is
always a latent desire of any administration to avoid or to reduce these costs. A simple
solution to reduce the costs is by decreasing the space of UGAs.
Utilization competition between different economic, social and environmental
aspects:
Due to the limited space in cities there is always a strong competition for how to use the
urban area. In growing cities the demand of business for areas to construct (high) office
buildings is huge. As UGAs bring no financial profits and cause costs, it can be observed
in many cities all over the world that the share of green areas in the center of cities
increases. The step to use free (green) areas as building areas is a very long-lasting
decision because buildings have an extremely long life. Usually building areas are never
changed back to green spaces.
“There are conflicts between economic benefit and social benefit” (EXPERT-F 2011).
Example of opaque is that, if people do not want to go to parks, the city will use the land
for hotels and business centres, which bring much more financial benefit than a park.
Ms. HANH gave a simple cost-benefit example: “After investing in a project for Thong
Nhat park, the investor can have 400 million VND. Even if the investor has to pay a lot
of black money (due to corruption) to one or two persons to own the project, he/she still
has 200 million VND in interest. Because payment for one or two people is always
smaller than the financial interest or by pushing the prices of products or services at the
end higher, he/ she can earn much more interest at the end”.
However, the environment has recently become a fashionable term not only in academic
circles but also on a political level. Its power is used as an effective tool to reach specific
goals. For example, “the project to construct the hotel-business building Vincom in
Thong Nhat park failed. Environmental preservation was used as a weapon against the
project but the reason behind it is private economic purpose” (EXPERT-F 2012).
Rising awareness of the benefits of UGAs as well as urban comfort:
UGAs bring visible ecological and social benefits and less visible or indirect economic
benefits to a city (see chapter 2.4). In contrast, the direct interest and actual needs from
business are often easier to see and to understand than the long-term effects. But
recently, public consciousness concerning environmental aspects and common citizens’
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