Skip to main content

Finland to help Vietnam develop smart cities

Speaking at a seminar held in Ho Chi Minh City, Finland's Minister of Economic Affairs Jan Vanpaavuori said that that his country would help Viet Nam achieve ambitious targets for smart and green cities by providing assistance in sustainable urban planning, industrial design, clean technologies and digital services, along with education and training.
October 23, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
Speaking at a seminar held in Ho Chi Minh City, Finland's Minister of Economic Affairs Jan Vanpaavuori said that that his country would help Viet Nam achieve ambitious targets for smart and green cities by providing assistance in sustainable urban planning, industrial design, clean technologies and digital services, along with education and training.

"The fast urbanisation and dynamic modernisation process in Viet Nam has increased demand for energy efficiency, smart transport and modern city infrastructure. This enormous growth potential makes Viet Nam a very interesting partner in the smart city area," he said.

Vanpaavuori said Finland had invested a great deal in demand-driven innovations and new business solutions, assisted by forward-thinking companies. He said the strengths of the Finnish economy and industries complemented Viet Nam's development needs and challenges.

Finnish companies have already contributed to Viet Nam's Green City targets in a number of ventures, including waste-to-energy plants, urban infrastructure and bridge development and the development of Ho Chi Minh City’s new urban area.
Experts estimate that the population of cities will increase from 3.3 billion to nearly 5 billion by 2030.

"With fast-growing and transforming cities, we are faced with challenges like air pollution, traffic problems, poor or non-existing city planning, lack of space and sustainable energy solutions. If not taken care of, at worst this leads to serious socio-economic and environmental problems," Vanpaavuori said.

Le Manh Ha, deputy chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, said the city wanted to become a smart city by using IT in urban management. "The city wants to access advanced technology from Finland in urban design, traffic management organisation and wastewater management so that we can create sustainable urbanisation and a growth model," he said.

Related Content

  • ITS annual meeting - how transportation affects social issues
    August 2, 2012
    The 2010 ITS America Annual Meeting & Exposition, which will take place in Houston, Texas will offer attendees something of a contrast with the policy-driven event which took place in Washington, DC this year. Houston will go to the other end of the scale and focus on real-life technology applications and operational best practice, says event Co-Chair David Sparks
  • Sustainable mobility: innovative solutions needed to reduce traffic emissions
    May 1, 2021
    Kapsch TrafficCom’s Mobility Report 2021 reveals how new ITS measures such as vehicle connectivity and AI-based data processing can help create joined-up traffic management
  • Personal Rapid Transit, clear benefits for European cities
    July 26, 2012
    David Crawford watches the race to get the world's first PRT system up and running. To paraphrase the old joke about buses bunching, you seem to have to wait several decades for a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system, and then half a dozen come along together. Currently, in fact, there are well over that number of schemes for driverless electric passenger-carrying 'pod' networks at various stages of planning, design and implementation around the world. Locations range from a straight-off-the-drawing board ne
  • Vietnam launches project to integrate the country's ETC systems
    September 14, 2015
    As part of a master plan for its highways, Vietnam is pushing ahead with a demonstration project aimed at integrating the country’s electronic toll collection (ETC) systems. Vietnam is making steady progress in introducing ETC systems into the country's expressway network, but many are calling for the country to integrate its three separate communication modes currently in service – active dedicated short range communications (DSRC), passive DSRC and radio frequency identification (RFID). The Director