New Development Space: KĐTM Đền Lừ

Last friday my project group mapped out the new development area around KĐTM Đền Lừ. Quite frankly the experience was depressing and made me think about development in a new way. While I've read alot about the negative consequences of development before, walking through this "neighborhood" allowed me to experience it first hand, and I was actually fairly surprised by what I saw. 

• empty streets (but not cleaner)
• luxury cars
• lack of goods
• spread out
• abundance of parks in the non apartment residential area

It wasn't the sort of carbon copy suburbia that you would see in the US where every house is the same. Rather this area consisted of run down high rise apartments, empty streets, a lake with no benches, a giant sports center and a gradual transition into single family houses and finally more traditional space. The area immediately around the apartments was the most depressing to me. I would love to know the stories of how people wound up in those apartments... but they felt like totally dehumanizing places. They were incredibly tall with no elevators and steep ramps to bring your motorbikes up to your room.

While some goods were available near the such as trà đá and bia hoi, they lacked the vibrant social aspect of the city. At three in the afternoon they were completely empty... I think most residents were out to work.


The area near the lake and sports center was interesting to me. On one hand the lake was beautiful and was the one of the only place where we saw lots of people hanging out. On the other hand it was not designed to encourage relaxation. There were no benches (one entrepreneurial food vendor had brought out plastic chairs but you had to buy something to sit), no places to put boats into the lake and no wide open areas to play on. There was a gigantic sports center on one side of the lake, but it was completely empty while boys played soccer in the roundabout right outside its gate.

The non apartment residential area was probably the place I liked most of the places we went. In many ways it reminded me of where I live back home. It was a housing district where each of the houses was individual, much like my neighborhood. There were plenty of trees, and several really nice parks. There was an elementary school and vocational school hidden among the maze of streets. The streets were fairly large and inhabited by a fair number of cars. By reminding me of home it  forced me to reconsider what I value in a living space. I've always liked the peace and quiet of purely residential areas, but compared to the life of Teng Sung this area felt dead. It annoyed me that I had to walk  20 minutes to get to a street where I could buy necessities, while at home I think nothing of having to drive to the store. It made me realize that even the sides of development I cherish come with real trade offs. The peace and quiet of a residential neighborhood with parks are only obtained with the loss of street life and a reliance on cars.

Finally after nearly 2 hours of walking we arrived at a real Hanoi street complete with goats being slaughtered, shoe shining and yummy xôi xéo. Yet even on this street we couldn't find all of the things on the list that we had found so easily in the traditional neighborhood. I really don't think I would like living in this area very much. I think It would be quite depressing, especially knowing that so many wonderful places exist in Hanoi.