Great Hanoi business cards printed by MOO.com

As part of the Master Urban Plan of the Expanded Hanoi Capital (a.k.a. “Great Hanoi”), we printed some business cards from MOO.com.

I chose photos from our last trip to Hanoi (no need to worry about copyright there). I purposefully chose images about the current urban condition, monuments, historic and symbolic places to act as conversation starters when we hand them out.

The first batch printed on recycled paper came out awful, but the reorder batch on standard coated paper came out really well.

Hanoi, Vietnam

As part of my new job at JINA Architects, I visited Hanoi, Ha Phong and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam in late August. I wasn’t able to post about it since the Vietnamese government had yet to formally announce the winner of the international competition to formulate a new Master Urban Plan of Hanoi. I am happy to say that JINA, in a consortium with POSCO Engineering & Construction, a construction firm based in Korea and Perkins Eastman of the US, won the bid. I am now part of the team that will execute the project.

The first thing that strikes you in Hanoi is the traffic.

The motorcycles whizzing by in all directions, the constant beeping of all the vehicles, its apparent chaos exacerbated by the dearth traffic lights even at the heart of Hanoi, is overwhelming for the first time visitor. The motorcycle thing took a little getting used to. But since Hanoi has little public transportation infrastructure, and the price of fuel is pretty costly relative to the living standards, the plethora of two-wheeled traffic is understandable. Crossing the road is a hairy experience and literally reminded me of Frogger, the 80’s arcade game and the sobering experience of Seymore Papert, one of the founding faculty of the MIT Media Lab, who suffered brain damage after he was hit by a motorcycle while crossing the road in Hanoi a couple of years ago.

Once you get used to the traffic, you realize that this is a city on the verge of exploding. Vietnam has experience massive economic growth since Đổi mới (renovation), its embrace of free markets in 1986, and evidence of the growth can be seen in the city everywhere in poorly regulated new construction sprouting up like weeds.

The word for crisis in Chinese (which is also the same in Korean) is 危機. The first part 危 is the character for “danger”, where as the second part 機 is the character for opportunity. The crisis in Hanoi presents itself as a unique opportunity to do amazing things. Hanoi has a colorful history that dates back some 1000 years, which is when it was first established as a capital. You can still see Chinese and French influences, remnants from the war with the US (the “American War” as it is called in here), as well as more recent Soviet-era architecture imported in the post-war years. But all this is fast disappearing, and soon, without intervention, Hanoi is in danger of becoming yet another characterless modern Asian city. We’ve seen too many cities in Asia being all too eager to sacrifice their past heritage for looking modern and “developed” in the eyes of the world. Seoul, as we all know, was one of them.

Hanoi’s Ancient Quarter, a.k.a. “The 36 Streets” is a combination of market, street life and housing. According to some estimates a staggering half a million people pass through the quarter a day. It has traditionally been a place where family-based craft guilds established their presence in Hanoi. The French colonial rule and communist rule following the unification of Vietnam wiped out most of the traditional guilds, but you still see strong grouping of business by produce around the quarter.

I couldn’t figure out how this run-down market could attract so much people and traffic during all hours of the day. After I returned and read some more material about the Ancient Quarter, I discovered that it has one of the highest population density in Asia. The narrow 2-3 story storefronts hide “tube houses” that may be as deep as 100m, and home to as many as 50 people.

Another striking feature of Hanoi is water. Hanoi in Chinese means “between the rivers”, and the Red River surrounds the city. There are also two major and many minor lakes and ponds scattered around Hanoi. Tay Ho is the biggest, but Hoan Kiem is the most beloved, with its legend of a turtle that delivered a sword that brought victory to Le Loi during his revolt against the Ming Dynasty. Hanoi is indeed a city of water.

Van Mieu or the Temple of Literature dates back to 1070, and is an island of serenity in a sea of traffic and construction chaos.

Although this was my first visit to Hanoi, as a Korean and East Asian, I found Hanoi strangely familiar. It was hard to place my finger on what exactly this feeling was, but having experience rapid growth and development (and my fair share of disorientation) in Seoul, Hanoi reminded me of Seoul of the 70’s and 80’s. But that wasn’t all of it. It was a strange familiarity that was akin to, in some ways, to meeting for the first time a cousin that one has never met before: There was something in Hanoi that was already in me.

Hanoi has all the potential of becoming a truly great and beautiful city. It has a raw and yet sophisticated charm, having been layered by so many rich cultures, and imbued with natural beauty of waters and its immediate surroundings. It’s already all there. All it needs is a careful polishing.

—

Here’s all the photos posted to Flickr from my August 27-30, 2008 trip to Vietnam.

JINA Architects

I formally started working at JINA Architects on September 1, as an Associate Partner.

After a 9 year hiatus, I am back in architecture. Well not quite. It’s urbanism. JINA Architects is a more than a design studio. It’s currently has about 140 staff, a huge growth from having just over 30 a decade ago. Under the management of Eliot Bu (blog / mostly in Korean), it has transformed from just another architecture studio, doing mostly commercial and academic buildings, to now consulting for local and international government clients on urban design issues.

The key to its success? Design Knowledge. With any consulting practice, the key is consolidating and managing knowledge. In the case of JINA, knowledge enables the analysis of legal codes and policy that govern urban design practice. Corporations and architectural practices see the building code as a constraint they have to “deal with”. The government see the building code as a tool for regulating the quantity and quality development. And hence the lack of communication between the two. When you have a deep knowledge of codes then you can act as a medium between the two seemingly opposing entities, and the role that JINA has carved out for itself.

In the US and Europe, non-profits function to collect, analyze data and consolidate knowledge. These non-profits provide politically neutral facts that both businesses and policy makers have equal access to. Korea hasn’t reached that stage yet, with knowledge being held in closed government institution or corporate think tanks. Yet, this is one of the ultimate goals of JINA - to create a non-profit: to collect, analyze and provide access to urban design knowledge and through it to influence the quality of life and in turn, and as corny as it sounds, to change the world.

What is my role in all this? Eliot invited me to join JINA to head the project to develop the Master Urban Plan for the Expanded Hanoi Capital which they were finally officially awarded Sept 23.

Am I qualified? My lack of urban design experience surely would pose a handicap. In the words of Eliot, this is the exact reason I was offered the job, apparently. Urbanism is more than engineering and construction. It’s about the lives of people and hence more infinitely complex, and in dire need of a new approach. He wanted an outsider, untainted by ingrained urban design practices to seek a new approach that incorporates the wide range of expertise that have typically been left out.

For the Hanoi project we have experts in energy policy, international affairs, marketing, sustainability, urban sociology, cultural studies, clean energy development, Vietnam legal system in addition to local experts providing their perspective on how a city should be developed.

This a new approach to urbanism that hasn’t been attempted before and I am caught between fear and dread and shear excitement and optimism that I have been lucky enough to have been offered the opportunity to participate in such a history event of developing a master plan for a city.

We will be changing the lives of the millions in Hanoi. And I know already that Hanoi is a city that will change my life. I have to believe it is a calling, and I am humbled.

—

I won’t be moving to Vietnam as the title might suggest. But I will be making frequent visits to Hanoi. The title’s just a play on the last time I posted about a new job, New City, New Job. That time, I found a city and then found a new job. This time I found a new job which found a city.

Community Garden in Bundang, Korea
The sign reads: No gardening. The land is owned by Korea Land Corporation and will soon be sold and developed, therefore any cultivation is forbidden. No compensation shall be made for any damages to illegally cultivated goods. May 2005. - Korea Land Corporation

It is said that what is everybody’s is nobody’s. When something lacks ownership it tends to be abused or neglected.

This long Chuseok weekend, I finally had a little extra time to explore my neighborhood. I live in Bundang, which is one of 5 planned satellite cities (link in Korean) created to house the ever-growing population who work in Seoul. It is one of the better ones with a lot of (interesting) open space running through the rows and rows of mind-numbingly boring monolithic slab apartment blocks. I live in its far corner which ain’t all that bad, at the foot of some nearby hills with hiking paths.

On my walk, I noticed a empty plot of land, where people were growing vegetables, in the adjacent lot next to where my 3 block apartment complex stands. There are signs scattered across the plot which forbid any cultivation. I passed by without thinking too much, but this plot of land lingered in my mind long enough to form a series of questions what bubbled up to consciousness:

1. Why was it empty?

In a place like Bundang, where land is so precious, and high-valued, there must be a good reason why it is empty. According to records, it been zoned for residential development and is owned by the Korea Land Corporation, which is the government organization that developed Bundang. Signs on the land state that it will be developed soon, but it’s dated 2005. I’m not sure why it’s being left intentionally empty.

2. What was happening in this empty plot?

It was being cultivated as a community garden. Elderly residents of the nearby apartment blocks have taken over the land, and have planted all sorts of vegetables used in common Korean cuisine.

3. Why was this happening?

What is interesting here is that a vacuum is being filled not with abuse (e.g. communal trash heap) but with productivity (communal vegetable garden). Koreans, especially elderly ones, have a very strong attachment to the earth. My dad has it. He’s always been fostering a romantic dream of retiring to a house on a small plot of land where he can grow his own vegetables. I have never seen him grow anything in my years as his son.

4. What does it have to do with sustainability?

There are 3 components to sustainable communities in the broadest sense: Economic, Environmental and Social. The environmental is the middle sibling that gets all the media attention, but it cannot exist without its two companions.

In my mind, the example of elderly Koreans appropriating empty land for vegetable growing is on a small scale and example of sustainability in practice. It’s obviously environmentally sustainable. It’s also economically sustainable. Elderly people live on meager stipends, with a fixed income, so these people growing their own vegetables close to home make economic sense. But what is equally important is the social sustainability. No sustainable practice can be truly be sustainable without a strong social component: Growing their own vegetables give elderly people a sense of purpose and self-esteem. They are less apt to nag their kids because they have something to do, and it gives them a good reason to invite friend and family over to enjoy the food, or to invite themselves over, to bring over homegrown vegetable to their no-time-for-real-food kids who are too busy scraping a living together. It also provides a generational bridge for grandchildren to work alongside grandparent, not to mention all the knowledge sharing that occurs between gardeners.

In short, the 3 components together create a loop that enriches lives of all residents. A sustainable community.

I’m wondering why more housing developments don’t just create communal vegetable plots with their communal land, which most often suffers from bad landscaping or in worst cases, just cemented over to lower maintenance. Each resident could be assigned a plot of land in the communal garden. If they don’t care for gardening they can lease their land for a fee or freely to those who do care. It’s like guaranteed parking space.

I never cared much for growing things myself, but I can see why people do. I must be getting old.

—

Community gardening has been formalized in the US and UK, but from my shallow internet search (Naver, Google), there doesn’t seem to be any formalized grassroots (nice pun!) organizations in Korea as yet.

—

[update 2008-09-18] Found an entry on Urban Agriculture on Wikipedia (my italics):

Urban farming is generally practiced for income-earning or food-producing activities though in some communities the main impetus is recreation and relaxation. Urban agriculture contributes to food security and food safety in two ways: first, it increases the amount of food available to people living in cities, and, second, it allows fresh vegetables and fruits and meat products to be made available to urban consumers. A common and efficient form of urban agriculture is the biointensive method. Because urban agriculture promotes energy-saving local food production, urban and peri-urban agriculture are generally seen as sustainable practices.

Given that soon 50% of the world’s population will be living in cities, and many of the new residents would have migrated from agriculture, it would seem to make sense for rapidly growing cities to reserve land around the city for agriculture. This would also form a natural buffer to resist urban sprawl and promote density in urban areas.

To feed a city with a population of 10 Million (Seoul, New York etc), you need to import 6000 tonnes of food each day.