The following article from yesterday's Vietnam News confirms population growth figures for Ho Chi Minh City:
Planners evaluate overflowing city
(20-03-2006)
HCM CITY — With HCM City’s population projected to hit 10 million by 2010, local planners are working hard to determine whether the city’s infrastructure and development plans will be able to accommodate 4 million newcomers.
And I thought the density of the City was very high with its current six million population. The article goes on to present conflicting opinions of solutions for accommodating this growth, with one City department proposing satellite communities around the center, and another proposing more high-rise housing in the center city and elsewhere. Jakarta and Manila were cited as models for absorbing this growth, but I have not been to those locations. I did see Shanghai before and after its ten-year growth spurt in the late 90s-early 00s, and it did an amazing job of transforming its infrastructure. Shanghai adopted the high-rise housing model, and it made it a very different place from what it was, for better or worse.
It is going to be very interesting to see how HCMC thinks through this challenge in the next few years.
