While sustainable smart cities are considered a solution to sustain international business investments, for Vietnam experts have advised local cities and provinces to prioritise building them to attract FDI.

With more than 3.5 billion people living in urban areas and 70% of humanity expected to live in cities by 2050, building smart and sustainable cities is a top priority for social development globally.

The central city of Da Nang and the Viettel Military Industry and Telecoms Group (Viettel) have agreed on a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to complete the development of Da Nang into a ‘smart city' by 2025.

To date, 41 out of 63 provinces and centrally-run cities in Vietnam have developed projects on smart cities of various scale.

Digital transformation is no longer a goal but an imperative action of businesses, especially of manufacturing businesses.

Vietnam's Becamex IDC signed a cooperation programme with The Connected Places Catapult (CPC) of the UK on developing the Binh Duong smart city.

Binh Duong Smart City of the southern province of Binh Duong was named in Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2021 at the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) in New York, the US, on July 1.

Urban development in the 1960s and 1970s in Singapore and Seoul could be valuable lessons for Hanoi to map out its sustainable development.

HCM City is looking for breakthrough models and solutions to realize the goal of becoming a smart, dynamic, creative, regional- and international class metropolis, the city’s Chairman Nguyen Thanh Phong said.

HCM City authorities will continue to resolve flooding and traffic congestion, build major transport works, and streamline administrative procedures to reach “smart city” status by 2030, a city official has said.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has proposed to implement a smart and energy efficient city project (SEECP) with total investment of more than VND1.56 trillion ($67.29 million) in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho.