en.Wedoany.com Reported - Vietnam views smart city development as a crucial driver for enhancing labor productivity, expanding economic space, promoting national digital transformation, and achieving the goal of double-digit economic growth. This model is not limited to technological applications but is also expected to foster new governance models, optimize resource allocation, and form growth poles based on data and innovation-driven entrepreneurship.
Urban areas currently contribute approximately 70% to Vietnam's national GDP. Rapid urbanization has brought pressures in areas such as transportation, environment, energy, and population management. Experts believe that if traditional models persist, the development space and growth dividends for cities will gradually narrow.
Tran Dinh Thien, former Director of the Vietnam Institute of Economics, pointed out that to achieve high growth targets, Vietnam must build a new development space driven by technology and innovation. Cities are the areas where factors such as data, knowledge, and labor productivity are most concentrated.
Resolution No. 57 of the Party Central Committee Politburo on achieving breakthroughs in science, technology, innovation, and national digital transformation calls for standardizing digital infrastructure and developing national digital data. This is considered a prerequisite for the synchronized and sustainable development of smart cities.
In 2026, the Ministry of Science and Technology will continue to promote standardization in core areas of the digital economy, with smart city-related standards accounting for a significant proportion of the standards system.
Experts indicate that transportation infrastructure is the "backbone" of traditional cities, while data and digital infrastructure serve as the "nervous system" of smart cities. All aspects, from transportation, environment, and planning to public services, need to be connected on a unified data platform to support administrative management and efficient decision-making.
At the end of 2025, the Ministry of Construction officially launched the National Smart City Information Portal (smartcities.gov.vn) for the management, monitoring, and promotion of national urban digital transformation. The system adopts an open architecture, synchronized with national information systems, supports data-driven scientific decision-making, and promotes the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. Localities can formulate development roadmaps based on actual conditions, creating a transparent environment to attract enterprises and experts to participate in smart city development.
While Vietnam's smart city development has achieved initial results, it still faces challenges such as data fragmentation, lack of interconnectivity, inefficient cross-sectoral coordination mechanisms, and a shortage of high-quality talent.
To address these bottlenecks, the Ministry of Construction has advised and submitted to the Government for promulgation Decree No. 269 on smart city development. This decree sets clear requirements for digital infrastructure, technical infrastructure, and data standardization to ensure uniformity, connectivity, and interoperability among systems. Experts assess this as an important legal foundation to prevent localities from developing systems independently and in isolation, which would cause resource waste and make future expansion difficult.
In the long term, smart city development is not just a technological issue but a process of restructuring the urban development model. When data becomes the cornerstone of governance, public services are fully digitized, and decisions are based on real-time data, urban competitiveness will be significantly enhanced. This is also seen as a crucial space and potential for Vietnam to form new growth poles, improve labor productivity, and achieve the goal of double-digit economic growth in the digital era.
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