Spatial Urban-Agriculture Planning and Management in Metropolitan Areas of Vietnam: Community-Based Solutions for Sustainable Development

Over the past twenty years, Vietnam’s cities have experienced unprecedented rapid urban development. When the speed of urbanization is taking place rapidly, comes a series of new challenges: the area of agricultural land decreases on a large scale, a part of the labor force in agriculture loses productive land and becomes unemployed; a part of laborers moves from rural areas to urban areas; increasing pressure on resources such as land, food and water. In the world as well as in Vietnam, spatial urban-agriculture planning and management has been and is being interested by many governments at all levels. Many agricultural spatial models and topics related to spatial urban agriculture especially in the field of urban planning are increasingly being paid attention in many researches, and that issue has become an official agenda in several international forums. Urban agriculture not only ensures the requirements of solving labor and income issues for a large population of urban and suburban populations but it also plays an even more important role in creating landscapes and protecting the ecological environment. This paper develops another understanding of spatial urban-agriculture planning and management in metropolitan areas of Vietnam with the case of Hanoi by providing ideas of using community-based solutions as a proposal solution for sustainable development.