Hanoi’s authorities have restarted the Song Hong City project along Red River with South Korean investors after a 22-year delay.
Multi-billion city centre to be built along the bank of Hanoi's Red River
Vice chairman of Hanoi Nguyen The Hung has asked the Department of Planning and Investment to gather opinions from other agencies. The department proposed to let the Department of Architecture and Planning to discuss with the investors about the project's criteria.
If the project's scale does not fit with the city's urban planning, the Department of Architecture and Planning will have to find a new location.
Song Hong City was a project proposed by Singaporean investors to build a new multi-billion city centre with a range of shopping centres, high-end apartment buildings and urban areas along the bank of Hanoi's Red River in 1994. The Singaporean partners would have helped design the urban centre.
However, the two sides couldn't reach any agreement on how to control the river and the project was halted.
Recently, Hanoi and Seoul have begun discussing the resumption of the project.
According to the plan, the urban area will run along 40 kilometres of the Red River with an estimated USD7bn investment. About 39,000 households will be forced to relocate.
In September 2007, an exhibition about the urban area project along Red River was held to gather public opinion. Statistics back then showed that only 37.8% supported the project completely, 30.5% agreed with the majority of the proposal and 27% only agreed in parts. 4.6% didn't want the project at all.
No public consultation has yet to be organised on the revised proposals.