Urban policy and administration

For the next few decades, HCMC’s urban planning will focus on adapting to the impacts of climate change, including floods and rising sea levels. A decision on the city’s urban planning until 2040 with vision until 2060, signed Tuesday by Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh, ...

Thai roads are among the most deadly in the world and most of the fatal accidents involve motorcycles. We already know that, but a recent study now shows that 80% of motorcycle accidents are related to cars cutting in front of oncoming traffic. Honda and Yamaha ...

Thailand finds itself in a pressure cooker these days, dealing with pre-Covid-19 economic weaknesses, the lack of longer-term responses to the economic and social crises from the pandemic, and uncertainty about how much longer people can hold on before falling into poverty, losing jobs or ...

Vietnam’s top leaders have resolved to become at least a middle-income country over the next five years, an about-face from abject poverty in the 1980s, by attracting more foreign investment in manufacturing. The Communist Party’s Central Committee wrapped up a plenary session October 8 held to ...

The stay-at-home order because of COVID-19 is causing hardships for the most vulnerable in Yangon. Only one person is allowed to go out at a time and some streets don’t allow strangers to enter, causing hardships for street pedlars and gig economy workers. Most shops in ...

Vientiane authorities will impose a new legal measure designed to control noise as part of efforts to transform the capital into a more peaceful and socially-ordered city. Mayor of Vientiane, Dr Sinlavong Khoutphaythoune, on September 19 endorsed the capital’s decision to limit the noise emanating from ...

Foreigners own around 16,000 apartments in Vietnam, or 2 percent of the total housing supply, and this has not affected local people’s opportunity to buy houses, a report says. From 2015 to 2020, 17 major real estate developers in Vietnam have sold 12,335 property units to ...

On June 30, the World Bank’s (WB) board of executive directors approved the financing of two projects —to help build a climate-resilient city in the Mekong Delta and improve the quality of Vietnam’s three national universities—at US$422 million. The Vietnam University Development Project, financed through credit ...

Urban land rights NGO Sahmakum Teang Tnaut released a research document on Monday showing a slowdown in land evictions in the capital, but said there was little evidence the process was improving or following human rights standards. The document, released by Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT) and titled ...

‘This cannot be serious” was my initial reaction to news reports saying the Transport Company is imposing a ban on foreign travellers as a measure to curb the spread of Covid-19. Or it might be fake news? In fact, such news reports are strange enough to ...