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

1 Introduction
With its 6.7 million inhabitants Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, qualifies as a so-called world
city (GSO 2011: 59) and it is ranked 104 in the “Global Competitive Index 2012 (EIUL
2012: 26). The economic development of the city is currently very positive, the population
is growing rapidly both residential and commercial areas are growing dramatically. In
short, Hanoi is booming – with
all the problems which are
common to such cities the
world over.
“Urbanisation, in particular the
extreme and rapid
development we can observe
today, entails many
implications which touch
nearly all areas of life (...).
Unfortunately not all
developments are positive and
desired, there are also many
negative
implications”
(STEINGRUBE 2010: 414);
(see Figure 1.1).
In Hanoi, a lot has been achieved in recent years: new residential areas as well as
commercial areas have been built, large and new roads to manage the traffic have been
constructed. Other aspects of the infrastructure have been also modernized. However,
development is increasingly seen as running faster than the government and the responsible
urban planning facilities can manage and control. Undesirable developments, of the sorts
also known from the phase of rapid growth of many cities in developed countries have
taken place recently in Hanoi.
One crucial point seen in many large cities is a lack of public urban green areas. The
existing parks and gardens cannot satisfy the public demand and it is difficult to establish
new parks since there is strong competition for use of available land from the parallel needs
for housing and commercial usage. “The importance of accessible green areas for wellbeing”
is recognised since several decade in many European cities, e.g., by Swedish
National Institute of Public Health (OLOFSSON 2008), GreenKeys project of the European
Union Community (TURTON et al. 2006).
Figure 1.1: Implications in rapid growing cities
(source: STEINGRUBE 2010: 415)
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