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| Legislators vote on Law on Urban and Rural Planning.__Photo: VNA |
The Law on Urban and Rural Planning, passed in November 2024, will come into force on July 1, 2025, and replace the 2009 Law on Urban Planning.
The new Law stipulates that the system of urban and rural master plans consists of five grades and three levels. It specifies cases requiring the formulation of general master plans, zoning master plans and detailed master plans.
The 59-article Law provides the formulation, appraisal, approval, review, adjustment, and management of urban and rural master plans; and state management of urban and rural planning.
The Law also simplifies the planning procedures. Accordingly, it is not required to collect opinions of residential communities on general planning tasks of cities, towns, districts and functional zones (except new urban areas, townships and communes). Instead, related state management agencies will be consulted. For medium- and small-sized urban areas, it is not compelled to formulate zoning master plans.
Regarding the consultation about urban and rural planning, the Law says that provincial-level People’s Committees will have to collect opinions of the Ministry of Construction before the appraisal councils’ meetings are held, for general master plans of provincial cities and towns with population size equivalent to that of urban centers of grade II or grade III. This requirement is also applicable to master plans on underground spaces or specialized master plans on technical infrastructure of centrally run cities.
The Law adds provisions on underground space planning to optimize the use of space. Article 34 states that underground space planning for centrally run cities must be depicted in drawings at a scale of 1:10,000 or 1:5,000 as stipulated by the Minister of Construction.- (VLLF)
