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 Although uncompleted, the East-West Highway has been open to traffic for several months, facilitating travel between HCMC and fringe cities.

The highway, in particular, offers development opportunities for HCMC’s outskirts as it will shorten the distance to the city center. However, much work still needs to be done to complete the highway. Since it was opened eight months ago, rampant development has occurred along the East-West Highway.

Ho Quang Toan, deputy director of the HCMC Department of Planning and Architecture, said at a roundtable discussion hosted by Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon (Saigon Times Group) in late May that, “We are now discussing solutions to deal with what has already been built.”

The event attracted about 20 people from management organizations and renowned architecture firms who contributed ideas and discussed issues concerning the city’s three main routes including the East-West, Tan Son Nhat - Binh Loi and Hanoi highways. The East-West Highway was highlighted in the discussion.

Toan said that the department was only recently asked to present a master design plan for the entire East-West Highway, from which construction along the route can be based.

The department was also challenged about the highway’s affect on the surrounding community. The 23-kilometer road has destroyed many houses and much of the historical landscape along the Ben Nghe-Tau Hu Canal.

At the meeting, the management organization was asked to quickly prepare a final architecture plan so that local residents can rebuild their houses to conform. Currently, houses built along the highway on leftover site clearance area are of different shapes and sizes.

Architect Nguyen Van Tat said that rather than stipulate fixed numbers, the plan should provide a format for height and width ratio and distance from the road. 

“Urban architecture planning does not mean building a table filled with framed figures to force people to follow when they want to build a house,” Tat said, adding that it could be a real challenge for people who cannot afford to comply with regulations.

Khuong Van Muoi, chairman of the HCMC Architects Association, reminded the department that urban architecture should be feasible and realistic.

“It will be useless, no matter how beautiful, if the urban plan is unrealistic”. Architect Ngo Viet Nam Son suggested that the department divide the urban design into smaller sections, or else it would take several years to finish the entire highway due to a limited pool of experts.

In addition, Son said that the department should prioritize areas, and quickly develop a map to locate private land and state management lots. He said that priority should be given to private land as people who lost part of their property to make way for the highway need accommodation. Moreover, they cannot wait any longer for a construction license.

The HCMC Department of Construction sent a petition to the city authorities asking that they take drastic action to check and manage housing construction along the newly-built highway.

Accordingly, it urged the HCMC Department of Planning and Architecture to quickly create a master design plan including specific criteria to use as a basic for granting licenses to build along the highway.

It waits to be seen how management agencies will solve the East-West Highway’s remaining urban architecture problems, especially as the development of new roads lags behind the city’s rapid expansion.

VietNamNet/SGT