Lenin Park
From: Mai, Son
Date: Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 10:24 AM
A couple years ago, there was a plan to replace the Thang Loi with another structure, and an architect's conception was even produced: http://scottgoldarchitecture.com/Scott_Gold_Architecture/Architecture/Architecture_files/MWM_Commerical.pdf
Does anyone know what that status of this project is?
Son H. Mai, Ph.D. Candidate
Instructor of History
McNeese State University
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: 2009/3/7
Dear Tom,
I did some quick research on SIH Investment Ltd, which has often represented itself as part of the Scandinavian Air Services hotel group, SAS International Hotels. SIH was founded in 1985. In ,1994, it merged with Radisson to form the SAS Radisson Hotel Group. In 2001, this became Rezidor. Look at the attached business profile for SIH Investment Ltd and you will see no mention of SAS, Radisson or Rezidor in its board or investors. In a recent letter to Hanoi's mayor, however, Mr. Thomas Enslow, director of SIH portrayed his company as in one long 17 year line with the original SAS project. Maybe as individuals, but not as representatives of SAS.
All this seems pretty strange.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rezidor_Hotel_Group
Mike
Michael DiGregorio, PhD
Program Officer
Education, Media, Arts, and Culture
The Ford Foundation
Hanoi, Vietnam
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From: Thomas Jandl
Date: 2009/3/7
RE SAS hotel group: Years back,I worked as the lobbyist for a Norwegian environmental group called Bellona. SAS Radison was all about green certification, and cooperated with Bellona to change their business plan to get a green certification.
They stopped giving out individually wrapped butter, no more bar soap, beds from sustainablly forested wood and so on.
If SAS is involved and if they are still so into green, they may be an angle of attack.
Unfortunately, I have no contacts to any of this any more, but maybe someone with contacts to Scandinavia ...
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: 2009/3/7
Thomas
My guess is that SAS is not envolved but the investors keep invoking the original SAS project in order to gain government support.
Mike
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From: Bill Hayton
Date: 2009/3/8
The economist had something to say on the problems of working out who owns a hotel two weeks ago:
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13145889
Outsourcing as you sleep
Feb 19th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Reservations are plunging, but virtual hotel chains should escape the worst
YOU book a room on the website of a famous international hotel chain. As you arrive to check in, its reassuring brand name is above the door. Its logo is everywhere: on the staff uniforms, the stationery, the carpets. But the hotel is owned by someone else—often an individual or an investment fund—who has taken out a franchise on the brand. The owner may also be delegating the running of the hotel, either to the company that owns the brand or to another management firm altogether. The bricks-and-mortar may be leased from a property firm. In some cases, yet another company may be supplying most of the staff, and an outside caterer may run the restaurants. Welcome to the virtual hotel.
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: 2009/3/8
Bill,
This raises a complexity of issues for the Hanoi People's Committee. Should they consider the project's promoters as legitimate holders of any rights initially created by Vo Van Kiet in 1991, if the original rights holders either do not exist (SAS is no longer in the hotel business) or if the original rights holders sold or transferred those rights to others, including the right to use the name "SAS" in a project that is not invested in by SAS.
My guess is that the People's Committee is unaware of the smoke and mirrors. Thanks for bringing this up. I will bring the case to a friend in the city's legal office this week.
Mike
Michael DiGregorio
Program Officer for Media, Arts, Culture & Education
The Ford Foundation
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From: Minna Hakkarainen
Date: Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 1:25 AM
Dear list,
I find this discussion concerning the Lenin Park very interesting in a wider perspective - that of the future of the Hanoi city. When I first visited the city in 1991, it was very different from any big city I had been. And the best thing was the lack of constant trafic jams and a lot of green parks and lovely small lakes. As we all now, that is already in a history. It is only during the recent years that I have heard people living in Hanoi dreaming of moving out the city in order to have clean air, less time spent in the traffic jams etc. If this is the cost of the modernization, I consider the cost to be unreasonably high. I personally think that now could be the time to start thinking what can be done in order to save the best of Hanoi for the city residents as well as for the visitors.
Therefore, I would be interested to know, whether there are others in the list who would be willing to join/create a NGO/lobby network to promote human friendly development of Hanoi. I call this initiative a Green Hanoi Network, but the name really does not matter. The action should. As I am going to be in Hanoi very soon, I would love to discuss the matter with anyone having the same feeling about the city, both Vietnamese and foreigners. I believe that sometimes a lack of perspective is causing a lot of problems and perhaps this network could offer some joint perspectives for the decision makers. Those interested, please let me know!
Best from,
minna
Minna Hakkarainen
Institute of Development Studies
University of Helsinki
FINLAND
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: 2009/3/9
Dear List,
I do not think that such environmental vandalism is an inevitable cost of modernization, though it is certainly very common. In some big Asian cities, such as Tokyo and Seoul, the process was roughly the following: In the first decades of modernization, needs such as to inhale clear air were ignored in the name of rapid economic growth. Only after a certain level of affluency was achieved did the authorities become more responsive to citizen protests, not the least because by that time the middle classes also became powerful and prosperous enough to stage successful protests. To my knowledge, only post-1963 Singapore skipped this "get dirty to get rich" phase of urban development. Hanoi has already gone too far in environmental vandalism to adopt a Singaporean strategy, and thus the best we may expect that the "Seoul syndrome" will work quickly enough to save at least some parts of old Hanoi.
From overpopulated, smoke-filled, car-infested, deforested Ulaanbaatar,
Balazs Szalontai
Mongolia International University
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From: J Sager
Date: Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 2:18 AM
Dear Minna:
You might look into the Vietnamese NGO Action for the City, which works on some of these very issues in Hanoi. It is a very dynamic group, and its staff might be able to provide you with some interesting ideas, outlets, or leads in this area.
http://www.vidothi.org/
Yours,
Jalel Sager
Vietnam Green Building Council
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 3:22 AM
Minna
Yes, a Green Council is a great idea, especially if it can serve as a
means of linking Vietnamese professionals engaged in protecting the
city's remaining public spaces and historic landmarks and houses.
The current action is being coordinated primarily by another NGO,
working with the Vietnam Urban Planning Association. That NGO has as
its mission the preservation of public space, especially green space, as
a space for exercise, relaxation, and rest, especially for the city's
poor. VPA and that NGO led opposition to the first near catastrophe:
construction of an amusement park and shopping center in a corner of the
park marked by Tran Nhan Thong and Nguyen Dinh Chieu streets. Please
note that among those attending the conference that broke the public
opposition to the press was a current vice minister of construction, a
former mayor, and the vice dean of the architecture university. They
began discussing the current fiasco - the SAS Royal Hanoi Hotel, or
Novotel on the Park depending on who the investors are talking to - at
that meeting in July 2007. The current campaign has been brewing since,
though the speed with which the investors jumped into construction once
the sign was up, surprised us.
Also of interest: TV news over the weekend noted that the city was
preparing to sell 60 "old" villas.
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: 2009/3/9
Balazs
The new Hanoi development strategy is being formulated by a Korean Planning firm. I met with the principle on Friday. He re-iterated your story about Seoul to Ministry of Construction officials last week. Unfortunately, these guys (all men) only see the city in terms of infrastructure and skyscrapers. You could take them to Seoul, or New York for that matter, and they would not even notice the street life. That's how enamored with modernism they have become. The principle showed them images of what he considered Hanoi's advantages vis a vis other Asian cities, which in fact, included abundant street life, and they told him "this stuff is bad and will have to go, show us what the future will look like." This is what you get when urban planning education is an extension of architecture and engineering, with no exposure to the arts, humanities or the social sciences. They are planning a city like building a multilayer computer chip.
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: 2009/3/9
Dear Mike,
I must admit I am not too much surprised to learn that planners in Hanoi are getting inspiration from the South Koreans. When doi moi started in the late 1980s, some Vietnamese technocrats were fascinated by Korea's example, not the least because South Korean modernization had been carried out by an iron-handed military dictatorship. Now they want to play the same role, because they think that following the Korean model of "authoritarian development" will both enable them to develop the country and retain their power. They try to justify their rule by what was done in Korea. Thus any suggestion to let citizens have more say about what and how should be done in urban planning would probably touch them on the raw.
Best,
Balazs
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From: Matthew Steinglass
Date: 2009/3/9
What ever happened to the JICA HAIDEP plan for Hanoi? Down the memory hole?
Matt
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: 2009/3/9
Down the tubes, I’m afraid.
Mike
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From: J Sager
Date: Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 4:54 AM
Matt:
From what I've been told by planners in Hanoi, the four-volume HAIDEP plan will be used as a reference, at most.
From one perspective, that intricate work reminds me of the mandala sand paintings done by Tibetan monks.
Here's a brief interview with one of the HAIDEP architects that suggests there is some tension between the HAIDEP plan for the Red River area (low density, environmental protection, etc.) and the South Korean one.
http://www.kientrucvietnam.org.vn/Web/Content.aspx?distid=8424&lang=vi-VN
Jalel
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: 2009/3/9
Balazs
I'm not sure of the authoritarianism they admire as much as the imagined orderliness, rapid success, and modernity that Seoul portrays for them. There is a deep, psychological element in this that is tied to a rejection of the countryside, and its backward and dirty life of toil (as a perception), vis a vis, the orderliness and cleanliness of modernity (again, not as reality, but as imagined). It thus becomes very difficult to discuss things like street life (which is rejected as backward) or green space (which is a waste of land), or preservation of old houses (which is uneconomical), and the list could go on. Old Hanoians simply chalk up this destruction of the city, as they have done for decades, to the psychology of the new rural elites who have migrated to Hanoi: that is, people who have no memory of the city, lots of ambitions, and not much under their hats. Others among us might take a more structuralism approach and see this in terms of economic transformation in the absence of a strong regulatory apparatus, including government, citizen groups, the press, and lawyers.
The Korean Planning Firm has proposed creating a "hanoicuatoi" website to counter this. Citizens would be able to upload photos, news articles, personal stories, data sets...whatever, to describe the visions of Hanoi's past and future. Sounds intriguing. But the consultant himself admitted that this was a hard sell with the Ministry of Construction which continues to hold a modernist perception of the role of expert knowledge in shaping the future. Oddly, however, their knowledge is rudely incomplete. They neither know, now wish to know, the failure of Corbusier's "home as a machine for living". The reality is that modern spaces, built to the scale of dehumanizing society, are crime ridden (no eyes on the street as Jane Jacobs noticed), transportation centered (try to cross the street on foot in My Dinh), alienating (high suicide rates because humans are basically slow moving creature who look over horizons and don't connect well to their space or to others when living in towers), and the list could go on.
Top of the list for my imaginary course in the social sciences for city planner: Jim Scott's Seeing Like a State.
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From: Balazs Szalontai
Date: 2009/3/9
Dear Mike,
I completely agree with your analysis but may add that this obsession with "orderliness and cleanness" (which are presented as sine qua non of modernization) was deeply rooted in the psychology of such military men like South Korean President Park Chung Hee. He went to great lengths to transform South Korean villages along the lines he considered progressive. This includes, among others, the (sometimes forceful) replacement of thatched roofs with metal roofs (not necessarily an improvement in hot summers) and ordering peasants to build their houses in neat straight rows (peasants sometimes built artificial corners so as to comply). Although Park himself was of rural origin, and old elites considered him an upstart, he was determined to root out old peasant habits, first by relentless propaganda, and then, if this proved insufficient, by force. For guys like him, authoritarianism equated orderliness, and orderliness was seen as a precondition of modernization.
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From: Kleinen, J.G.G.M.
Date: 2009/3/9
Ceauşescu instituted a program of “systematization” and succeeded for a great deal in the cities of Rumania. Maybe it is time to install a NGO project like "Sister Villages" that created bonds between European and Vietnamese communities to thwart these plans.
Cheers,
John
John Kleinen Ph.D
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Amsterdam
Department of Anthropology and Sociology
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From: Frank Proschan
Date: 2009/3/9
Mike's second paragraph reminds me of the Jacobean sentiments expressed very clearly by residents of the 36 Streets when the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology carried out its self-documentation project there a couple of years back: the long-time residents were identifying intangible heritage values ("gia tri di san phi vat the") exactly contrary to those expressed either in tourist-oriented development schemes or in (e.g.) West Lake mega-projects: "we could easily sell our crowded, cramped dwelling with poor sanitation and other inconveniences", they told the Museum researchers, "and have a big modern house in the suburbs, but then we'd have to worry all of the time about crime, since in the suburbs you don't even know your neighbours, and our kids would be on drugs. So what if we have to go outside to take a shower, here we at least have our neighbours."
Best,
Frank Proschan
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From: Tobias RETTIG
Date: 2009/3/9
For an article dealing with housing policies (and their consequences) and a Seoul mayor nicknamed 'The Bulldozer", see
“Struggles over Unlicensed Housing in Seoul, 1960-1980.” Urban Studies, vol. 45, no. 2 (Feb. 2008). [pdf on the author's website, at http://ap3.fas.nus.edu.sg/fass/polmej/]
Tobias
School of Social Sciences,
Singapore Management University
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From: J Sager
Date: Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 10:30 PM
Dear Mike:
Perhaps someone should remind these experts of Corbusier's famous "last" words: "Life is right, and the architect is wrong." Unfortunately, after clearing out the dusty architectural and city planning ideas, one needs to address the moldy single-bottom-line economic ones. And then the slick, well-constructed images of high consumption in gleaming towers beamed daily into the country. And then the agenda of foreign investors. There's an advanced support system for that vision of the future.
Part of what we try to do at the Council here in Hanoi is point out the alternative urban ideas growing up in Europe, the US West Coast, Japan, and elsewhere. Softer cities, with more green space and integration with agriculture will be better prepared for climate change--and perhaps economic--impacts than will Fritz Lang megacities. They'll also preserve heritage buildings and places like Lenin Park as a matter of course. The difficulty is that these "advanced" urban ideas grew up on top of far different urban histories, economic contexts, and governance systems. Finding a uniquely Vietnamese path to urban preservation and sustainability will require an enormous amount of effort on many different fronts. So far the system's pointed in the opposite direction.http://www.vsccan.org/vgbc/
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From: Andrew Wells-Dang
Date: Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 10:53 PM
A snapshot of urban improvement, witnessed about 10:00 this morning on
Ly Thuong Kiet street: a youngish woman wearing a headscarf runs
across the street in front of my bicycle carrying two baskets of duck
eggs on a bamboo pole. She is chased by two uniformed neighborhood
security officers, who corner her on the other side of the street. She
looked scared. I didn't stay around for the end of the scene, but from
previous experience, her basket and eggs will be put in the back of a
small pickup truck and taken away from her.
Just down the same block is the Vietnam Women's Museum, which has a
poster up for its exhibition on street vendors, featuring a woman
looking remarkably like the egg seller. I found the contrast ironic
and disheartening. The exhibit is open until April 1st - see it before
it's too late!
Andrew Wells-Dang
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Date: 2009/3/10
The sad underlying theme of that exhibit is that many of the women who are now hawking goods in Hanoi and being chased away by the police are peasant women who lost their land to urbanization.
About the exhibit: After the exhibit was organized, students and others were invited to give their reactions. Some produced photographs, others wrote long or short notes. Some of the photographs are actually better than the museum-produced ones, and the notes are more revealing than what the museum staff wrote up.
It's another exhibit which the Ford Foundation can be very proud to have supported.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 9:27 PM
Andrew,
Last summer I witnessed several cases where citizens refused to cooperate with this campaign. In each case, I realized that the police in charge where complying with the campaign because they had to, and would back away if they had any chance. In one case, angry residents yelled at one of the security men chasing a woman who was selling oranges, taunting him by saying that his truck was leaving him behind (which it was) and if he don't catch up, he would have to walk home. He ran off with the truck. Another case, an old women selling meat pulled her feet and basket into someone's doorway, thereby escaping the "not on the sidewalk" rule, and as the security men passed by, she said, "What are people going to eat - we can't afford supermarkets." The third case happened to me. I was waiting for a taxi early in the morning, when the security people grabbed a women selling fried tofu. I turned around, said nothing, but simply watched what was taking place. It appeared that this was not the first time the woman had been caught, and the security people noted how often they had told her to stay home, but told her that this time they would have to bring her in. She screamed and cried as I watched. Then the security people told her to please take her stuff and go home.
In short. Not a popular move with the public, nor with the security people.
Hue Tam has noted the exhibition at the Women's Museum. You cannot help but noticing the differences of opinion in the comments, with a small group, including the author of many books on Hanoi's streets, noting that vendors have to go if the city wants to be civilized.
I suppose we should say goodbye to fresh vegetables. There are no expiration dates on the saran wrapped stuff available in the super markets. I live on a lane where vendors can hide out, and am thankful for it.
Oh yeah, and how about all the women who rush out of their houses before 7 AM in the morning to buy fruit and flowers for the family altar, or stop by a street market on the way home in the evening to pick up vegetables for dinner. Will they be lining up outside supermarkets? I think the imagined future is one in which they citizens dutifully run off to Metro, Fivimart, or Carrefour for their weekly shopping. Does this represent a concentration of capital within the food distribution industry, a reduction in the freshness of food, and a loss of employment for man? Who cares! It's civilized!
Another case, Detlef Kammaier (former faculty AIT) told me a story about Singapore recently. In the late 1980s the Gov't realized that the old shophouses and villas that they had so vigorously destroyed to make way for development, where both symbols of national identity and tourist attractions. This brought about a re-examination of city planning that incorporated the creation of preservation districts (and unfortunately the eviction of many then current residents). They still had something to save, by the way, in part because of the holdouts in shop house areas like Arab street. Detlef told me the story of a friend whose family owned one of these houses, which they turned into a small boutique guest house: they had to invite the vendors who used to work on the sidewalk back to the street to create the proper ambiance.
Mike
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: 2009/3/11
Here's another article in English on the park which summarizes the situation to date..
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/258228,hotel-project-in-socialist-era-hanoi-park-draws-protests.html
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From: Pham Thai Son
Date: 2009/3/11
Nice observations that you all had...
That's one of challenges that Hanoi (and other cities of Vietnam) has to cope with in its way of development. The authorities recognize that the vendors cause the bad images for a "civilized city", and so in 2008 there was an official decision that interdicts the vendors in some main streets of the city. But they are still there, in all of the city, why? Just some thoughts about this interesting phenomenon:
+ First, we should note that most vendors come from the provinces around Hanoi, and the main reason is that they can't earn enough money for their familly's life in their origin place. So they have to go to the city for doing that. I think that solutions have to be found first in rural regions,
+ Secondly, like Michael give us a thought about the habit of Hanoi inhabitants in buying somethings for daily life. If we think about the majority of motors in Hanoi and its development trend (still) in the near future, the inhabitants of Hanoi will keep (and prefer) their habits of buying in streets (and also in narrow lanes) . And if there is a strong "demand" like this, how can we stop a "natural answer" that the type of vendors give?
+ Thirdly, a large part of Hanoi's households is still in a bas level of life (suprise but that's a reality), and the supermarket networks are still strange with them. So the "traditional habit" with normal market, provisional market, vendors on streets... will still occupy an important part in the near future, immediate change is impossible...
Thanks for reading and good day to all of you!
--------------------------------------------------------
PHAM Thai Son
Laboratoire "Environnements & Dispositifs Urbains" - INSA Lyon
UMR 5600 "Environnement- Ville - Société"
Adresse: Appt 15 résidence Sophia 106 rue Baraban 69003 Lyon
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From: dan hoang
Date: 2009/3/11
Dear all:
Some my personal thoughts:
How the poor Hanoi people can pay to buy supermarket high price foods? Also, some are not sure how safety of supermarket foods for them.
Civilization is that when people go without paying intention to the traffic laws? when they can throw rubbish in any places without thinking of environment pollution? and many other problems.
Lieu
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From: Tom Miller
Date: 2009/3/11
A letter later edited and published by Thanh Nien:
Dear Linh,
Have you written about the banning of street peddlers from Hanoi, as described in the article below by AFP's Frank Zeller? I think the real reason for their banning is not that they cause congestion, but embarrassment over this "old way" and a desire to make Hanoi look "modern", and this is not the right reason to force into poverty thousands of people who work so hard and are so important to the life of the city. As a foreigner who walks the streets of Hanoi, I can say that the main problem to access to the sidewalks is not sidewalk peddlers, but the proliferation of motorcycles. If anyone is embarrassed by people working hard to make a living, they should not be. I see them more has heroes than hindrances. In fact, so-called "advanced" cities in the United States are returning to the active street life that typified them one hundred years ago: farmers' markets not only on the sidewalks, but in blocked off streets are growing throughout the United States as people look for fresh, locally produced food and flowers - something that Hanoi already has. What you have in Hanoi and other big Vietnamese cities is far from embarrassing, but what "modern" cities need. Yes, something needs to be done about traffic congestion (and the unhealthy fumes created) and I think of the quiet bicycle city Hanoi once was - and the more advanced American cities are now returning to, to promote health and ease congestion. In short, to look to the future, I may not be a bad idea for Hanoi to look to its past for answers.
Sincerely,
Tom Miller
Vietnam capital plans to ban street hawkers
by Frank ZellerFri Jan 18, 5:41 AM ET
Vietnam's capital Hanoi plans to drive street vendors and hawkers off its sidewalks from Saturday in a push to bring order to the city and ease traffic flows, the administration said.
Women in conical hats selling flowers and fruit have been an iconic part of Hanoi's colourful cityscape along with chanting vendors peddling wares from bicycle-stores, informal roadside cafes, open-air barbers and noodle shops.
But all that is set to change if the communist administration forges ahead with its newly-announced campaign to clear the sidewalks of unlicensed small businesses and shift them into small alleys and lanes.
Under a new directive, from Saturday vendors will be officially banned from selling goods on big streets and outside schools, hospitals, government offices, religious, cultural and historic sites, and bus and train stops.
"We will prohibit all forms of trading, such as peddling or automobile washing services, that take place on the sidewalk," the mayor, Hanoi People's Committee Chairman Nguyen The Thao, told state media this week.
"The purpose of the programme is to make sidewalks available for pedestrians and improve the face of the city. Foreign tourists will be happier and appreciate our management," he told the state-run Vietnam News daily.
But street vendors and many residents voiced alarm as they waited to see how strictly the measure will be enforced.
"We will die of hunger," cried Hoang Thi Hong, a 37-year-old newspaper hawker. "I have two children and a whole family to support ... This is my only chance to earn money for the family."
Resident Pham Quang Hung, 56, buying a steaming corn cob from a street seller, said: "I often buy things on the streets. It's cheap and good and convenient. It's inhumane to drive those people away. How can they live?"
Debate has raged over the plan since it was announced several weeks ago.
"Hanoi stands to lose its distinctive colour and charm in favour of Singapore-style regimentation," said one letter to a Vietnamese newspaper.
But Thao told the Vietnam News that while he agreed Vietnam should safeguard its cultural traditions, "we do not have to conserve what is essentially a characteristic of underdevelopment.
"That tradition can be kept by filming and photographing," he said.
With most Hanoi houses cramped, shops and cafes long ago began encroaching on the streets, while roadside spots have been coveted by merchants, tradesmen, hawkers and people selling underground lottery tickets.
Every day before dawn hundreds of rural women make hours-long bicycle trips from their small farms into the city of about three million to earn a few dollars selling fresh fruit and vegetables to wealthier city dwellers.
The small businesses have long operated on the edge of legality and Hanoi police, travelling in small vans equipped with loudhailers, have sporadically chased them away, sometimes fining them or confiscating their goods.
Thao said Hanoi was asking districts and industries to find ways to help the vendors and said the city "will choose a plan that allows peddlers, mostly people living in suburban areas, time to find a new way to earn a living".
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From: DiGregorio, Michael
Date: Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 9:58 PM
For those of you following the construction of Novotel on the Park within
Unification park, here is some recent news:
http://dantri.com.vn/c20/s20-315615/kien-nghi-dung-du-an-khach-san-tai-cong-
vien-thong-nhat.htm
The People's Committee has been instructed to help the developer find a more
suitable location. The Vietnam Urban Planning Association was ready for
this, and presented several sites in My Dinh. The developer has now
countered with a suggestion to shift its plans to the Alcohol Factory on Lo
Duc Street. VUPA considers the Alcohol Factory unacceptable because of
traffic considerations.
Do any of you know the architectural history? If this site were used for a
hotel, what architectural features should be preserved as a museum-memorial
to resistance against the alcohol tax, for example?
Mike