Planning Must Go Hand in Hand With Resources

Ho Chi Minh City cannot keep drawing ambitious plans and searching for the money afterward. As the city expands and pursues double-digit growth, the question of resources must be raised at the earliest stage of planning.

The pressure is growing across the city. Urban space, population and economic scale are all increasing, while traffic congestion, flooding, housing shortages, parks, urban renewal and public transport still require solutions. The city cannot rely solely on its budget. Public investment should serve as seed capital that guides and activates resources from society.

That means reversing the familiar sequence. Instead of approving a plan and then asking where to find capital, investors and implementation mechanisms, planners should design the development structure and its funding at the same time. A workable plan must specify what will be developed, where and at what scale, which infrastructure must come first, who will invest, where the resources will come from, and how the resulting value will be shared and reinvested.

Too many areas already have clearly marked functions on maps but have not become usable spaces for residents. A planned park remains only land without funding. A road remains a line on paper without an investment mechanism and land clearance. Urban renewal stalls when no one knows who will invest, how the investment will work or how benefits will be divided.

The article revisits an approach proposed earlier: combine public-serving projects with developments capable of generating revenue. Roads could be linked to the careful use of adjacent land and space, while parks and public buildings could form part of larger urban development projects with suitable commercial and service functions. The stated aim is not to commercialize public infrastructure, but to capture development value and use it to create the community facilities themselves. Higher density also cannot be approved where infrastructure cannot cope, while increased land value from new infrastructure requires a mechanism for the city to recover and reinvest that value.