Back to work - looking at the HCMC urban environment

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Source: Codie Lesemann

Source: Codie Lesemann

Things are slowly getting back to normal with the schools open today. That’s one thing that really seems to be missing in the US - all these people clamoring for businesses to be open, but no place to keep the kids. Maybe schools are just a way to give parents time away from their children? That’s not too cynical, right? [FYI, I don’t have kids, so I have no idea what I am talking about.]

Anyway, I found this interesting article about the move to the east in HCMC. It is #6 in a series on the urban environment. Of course, I like the data, especially the data on population density in different parts of the city.

The areas the government is promoting are in the East, which makes sense given that they are big and have relatively lower population density. Districts 4, 10 and 11 are basically all similarly crowded. District 1 is in the middle, probably helped by office buildings.

HCMC is pretty dense, but not that dense, especially compared to its international peers. Compared to Mumbai, it’s like rural Iowa! But so is most everywhere else in the world.

However, HCMC is growing like crazy! It has averaged 2.15% over the past 10 years, and is growing about that much still. At that growth rate, the city’s population would double in about 33.5 years. A slightly higher growth rate of 2.5% means a doubling in 30 years.

This means a few things:

  • Good base of economic growth. Economic growth is a function of population growth to some extent, so as long as people are getting richer, the more population, the greater the economic growth.

  • There are going to be a lot of homes. The population increased by 50% from 2009 to 2019. And all of these people needed a place to sleep. It could be crowding into a family member’s home, but if they are making money, they will probably want to buy/rent something on their own.

  • Traffic is going to be worse. I hate to bang endlessly on the same drum, but we need more public transport. The metro is great, but there needs to be much more! Bus rapid transit. Limits on cars. Etc.

  • Lots more services are going to be needed. There are going to be tons of opportunities for the entrepreneurial minded.

But back to the point of the article: Districts 2, 9 and Thu Duc are the places where there seems to be the most potential for new development (although the south has a lot of development too). . The rest of the articles in the series are also excellent.