Developing Saigon : PMH Expansion & Ben Nghe

Whichever way you get there, Phu My Hung is currently a little isolated from the rest of the city. The drive out of District 4 along Khanh Hoi takes you over marshy palm fringed river banks before arriving at the cream concrete of Saigon's new urban project. This however will soon change. The expansion of PMH, by that I mean the PMH model of housing and urbanization, shows no sign of abating. For now the developers seem to be looking at the 'no mans land' that lies in District 7, sandwiched between PMH and Kinh Te of D4, a few kilometers closer to Saigon itself than the current estates. Firstly, let me introduce the area more precisely with a map (see the full size here).

Looking back into D4, this vast area of land is being cleared.

Both sides of the road now look like a building site.

With the way houses are developed on rectangular plots of land, when a keen landowner builds his house before anyone else, the appearance if often quite bizarre. A lone structure in a world of half-dug trenches and echoing jackhammers...the poor thing must be lonely. In the background, the proximity of PMH (Sky Garden, the northernmost complex) is clearly visible.

Not that I was trying to 'capture' anything in the following shot, my camera isn't big enough to make those kind of claims, but......here a newly completed apartment block looms ominously over miserable, ramshackle structures that squat by the waters edge.

A few kilometers further towards town and the Ben Nghe Canal cleanup/highway project seems to be coming along. The new road will sweep in from D5 and link up with the tunnel taking traffic out of the city through D2.

Surely some of the grubbiest buildings in the whole city right here, center of the picture. I remember this street when I first arrived. The canal was a steaming pile of multiple garbage genus, the road a bumpy and aromatic cauldron alongside an oily, trash strewn wasteland, not to mention the fish market under the bridge. Things are looking a lot cleaner now.