Developing urban green spaces
(Baonghean.vn)In recent years, fully aware of the effects of trees on the living environment, especially when becoming a type I city, Vinh City has paid more attention to developing trees in the city. This is reflected in the investment budget for planting, maintaining and caring for urban green areas, which has increased gradually over the years, from 4.2 billion VND/year (2009) to 6.2 billion VND (2010) and 10 billion VND (2011).
On the streets, in addition to the awareness of people planting trees in front of their houses for shade and dust protection, the green tree system is also paid attention to, ensuring relative coverage. Some routes have planned to plant a number of trees reasonably, with a unified species, such as Lenin Avenue with black star trees; Soviet and Truong Thi streets with cajuput trees; vonga on some routes of Quang Trung, Le Loi, Nguyen Trai, Lenin Avenue, Soviet... Along with Nguyen Tat Thanh Park, Ho Chi Minh Square, Central Park, the city has also restored the flower gardens of Cua Nam and Cua Bac; developed the green tree system in the Quyet Mountain forest park area... Thanks to those efforts, Vinh City is considered one of the 5 cities in the country with a high density of green trees.
Increasing green space for urban areas
Besides the positive factors, there are still many problems. Mr. Phan Xuan Bao - Director of Vinh City Green Park Joint Stock Company, said: According to Circular No. 20/2005/TT-BXD, dated December 20, 2005 of the Ministry of Construction on guidelines for urban green tree management, it is stipulated that for special and type I urban areas, the minimum land area for tree nurseries is about 1m2/person. Based on the regulations and on the population, the city is required to have a nursery area of 30 to 50 hectares.
However, in reality, the land area for nurseries to produce green trees and ornamental plants is currently being gradually narrowed, from 12 hectares in the Thanh gate area and Hung Phuc ward, now it has been taken over and converted to other purposes such as making a football field for the Song Lam Nghe An football team, making the headquarters and football field for Hung Phuc ward, now only 5.5 hectares remain.
Regarding the green coverage for type I urban areas, it is stipulated to reach 12 - 15m2/person, but in reality it is low. On the other hand, according to Decree 64/2010/ND-CP of the Government, when implementing the construction of apartments and new urban areas, investors must ensure 30% of the land fund for planting trees, but in reality, the proportion of trees in these areas is very modest. On the one hand, the requirement for trees for type I urban areas is to ensure a beautiful, civilized and modern landscape. However, the trees planted in the city are mixed in terms of tree structure and have not created a reasonable and unified structure for each route in terms of each suitable tree type. That is due to the previous purpose, the city only focused on prioritizing tree planting for shade and the trees planted still depended on the people, so there was no unity.
According to Mr. Luong Ba Quang - Deputy Director of the Provincial Institute of Architectural Planning, in the approved plans for Vinh City, the green tree index has been planned very fully and guaranteed. In particular, through 3 planning periods from the 70s of the last century until now, the outskirts of the city including Vinh Tan, Hung Hoa, Nghi Thai areas have been planned with thousands of hectares of green trees, the inner city has parks and flower gardens planned...
However, in the process of general development, the planned areas are gradually being encroached upon to serve the needs of urbanization (the immediate benefits) while forgetting or not clearly seeing the long-term benefits of the profound social community of green areas in the city. Therefore, the government and the people of Vinh City need to act today, resolutely ignore the immediate benefits to achieve long-term benefits by preserving the existing areas of lakes, flower gardens, parks, rows of trees, and lawns, and at the same time resolutely implement the planned ones, to ensure living space for urban residents, meeting the requirements of civilized and modern development of a type I city.