The status quo and future of a worth living city

In recent years, Binh Duong has been a bright spot of economic development, investment attraction and rapid urbanization. Many large-scale projects emerged and created a new urban face, for instance, Binh Duong New City. That was the premise, the basis, and the motivation for Binh Duong to become a worth living city.

From urban development projects

Among hundreds of implemented project, Binh Duong has been known for the project of Binh Duong New City. This was a large-scale project on an area of 1,000 hectares. Binh Duong New City was developed on the idea of ​​the Party, government and people of Binh Duong Province, and Design researching institute of National University of Singapore (NUS). Binh Duong New City will be a place to gather, attract high-quality human resources, an international gateway for trade and exchanges, as well as technology transfer at the highest level.

Implementing successfully, Binh Duong New City came true with a modern urban center and typical projects, like: Binh Duong New City Sports Center, social housing, Lucky Square building, Eastern International University, Vietnam-Germany University, supermarkets, markets...

Binh Duong is striving for becoming a worth living city. Image: A corner of Binh Duong New City.

According to Dr. Ha Thuc Vien, Vice Rector of Vietnam-Germany University, by 2020, as Binh Duong New City became a central county directly under Binh Duong City, apart from these above projects, there will also be high technology park, financial center, banks, stock exchange, offices for rent, high-class restaurants, hotels, public areas, public utilities… These projects will serve 125,000 local people and 400,000 people coming here to work.

To breakthroughs in strategy

After 5 implementation years, Binh Duong has made strategic breakthroughs, contributing to changing urban administration to transforming rural into urban areas. Thuan An, Di An, Ben Cat and Tan Uyen became towns; Thu Dau Mot City was officially recognized as type II urban. This change contributed to the dramatic population increase from 512,000 people in 2010 to 1.3 million in 2013, helped Binh Duong to achieve the highest urbanization rate nationwide.

Due to the high population increase, Binh Duong put forward rational policies to integrate economic growth with social advancement and justice. During nearly two decades, with high GDP growth levels (averagely 14%/year), provincial economic structure has shifted rapidly towards reducing agricultural value and increasing industrial and service proportion. Industrial production value keeps growing and had a major role in economic structure, attracting labor resources, mainly young workers, unskilled workers.

However, there were still many challenges: social housing, attracting human resources, high-quality human resource... In reality, Binh Duong built up the Binh Duong urban planning approved in 2012 with the vision till 2020. 5 years later, Binh Duong will become a city directly under the Central with total population of about 2.5 million people and urbanization rate of 85%. That means the province must serve 100,000 more people. Therefore, the living standard of local people is a big challenge in the urbanization process to Binh Duong province.

To become a worth living city, Binh Duong is investing in synchronous, modern traffic system. Image: A road in Binh Duong New City.

Another important thing was the restructuring of land use purposes resulting from industrialization and urbanization. Agricultural land plummeted to about 208,000 hectares in 2014, while non-agricultural land surged up to 61,000 hectares. During this transition, development projects played an important role with a planned area of 12,000 hectares for construction projects and almost 8,600 hectares for industrial parks. The land restructure will affect the environmental balance in the province. Therefore, Binh Duong is overcoming challenges and seeking to become a worth living city.

Turning towards a worth living city

A worth living city is a city, through good planning, provides a vibrant, attractive and safe environment for people to live, work and entertain. This city is also well administered, has a competitive economy, high-quality living standards, and environmental sustainability.

Due to advantageous geographical location adjacent to Ho Chi Minh City and in the southern key economic zone, appropriate accommodative policies, Binh Duong province has made great progress and become a bright spot of economic development and investment attraction of the country. Therefore, Binh Duong should also set out some general directions to become a worth living city to keep pace with the urban development trend in the future.

Namely, the province should build up a civilized, modern city according to the general objective set by the draft of the 10^th Provincial Party Congress (2015-2020 tenure): improving the quality of growth, the scale of the economy, ensuring sustainable development and proper growth. Accelerating economic restructuring towards service – industrial development associated with urbanization, agricultural development associated with high biological technology and biotechnological transfer. Addressing social problems. Improving the people’s material, cultureal and spiritual life. Securing political security, social order and safety. Building Binh Duong to become a civilized, modern city directly under the Central before 2020; good living environment, human factors and management mechanism innovation are core elements for the province to become a worth living city.

Reported by Hoang Anh – Translated by Ngoc Huynh