SAVING HANOI FROM ITSELF

By FRANK GIBNEY JR. HANOI

Designed by the French, bombed by the Americans and never appreciated by the Russians, Hanoi not so long ago was written off by outsiders as a crumbling bunker for Vietnam's communist leaders. No more. These days the capital's colonial villas and tree-lined boulevards catch the sentimental eye of nearly every Westerner who visits. Australian, British and French ministers have made Hanoi's renovation a personal cause. U.S. Senator John Kerry spent a good portion of a November 1994 visit outlining plans for a ``reconstruction fund'' with the city's chief architect. ``Hanoi is a real asset, an extraordinary jewel,'' says the Massachusetts Democrat, who is pushing for American money and expertise to help preserve Vietnam's capital. ``It is the most remarkable city in Asia.''

No one appreciates that more than the Vietnamese, who consider the city their cultural and intellectual wellspring. The challenge is to save it from its own creative destruction. In the frenzy to modernize the capital of what Vietnam's leaders hope will be Asia's next economic ``tiger,'' Hanoi is beginning to take on the more disturbing qualities of Bangkok, Taipei or Seoul. Historic shop houses and old temples are being pulled down to make way for chrome-and-glass hotels and offices--monuments to raw capitalism. Where the leafy streets were once blessedly quiet, they now reverberate with the rumble of bulldozers and the honking of car horns. Bicycles and pedicabs, once the only traffic, struggle to keep up. As new factories and office buildings sprout across the city, the antique sewerage and water systems are being pushed to the breaking point.

Hanoi's crisis is not just a race between urban planners and entrepreneurial developers. It is also about redefining Vietnam, in the words of Deputy Foreign Minister Le Mai, ``as a country, not a war.'' Established in 1010 during the Ly dynasty, Hanoi remained an unremarkable place until the turn of the last century, when France sent its best architects to what had become its richest colony. They designed grand theaters and government buildings, using the same proportional guidelines that gave Paris such remarkable balance in size and form, though French liberals of the time groused over ``la folie des grandeurs.'' From 1945 until recently, however, Hanoi barely received as much as a fresh coat of paint. Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam was too busy, running first the French out of the North and then the Americans out of the South. Neglect reduced many of the great ocher villas to crumbling ghost houses, often with electric wires dangling from broken windows.

Yet the war may have saved the city. With miraculously few scars from the 36,000 tons of U.S. ordnance that fell during the 1972 Christmas bombing, economically backward Vietnam missed the boom that swept the rest of Asia during the 1980s. When the government announced an economic- reform program in 1989, Hanoi stood out as a place with relatively little industry and few cars, clean air and no traffic. Though neglected, architectural gems like the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient and the former Bank of Indochina were resurrectable. ``For anyone interested in architectural questions, Hanoi is where the action is because there has been this palimpsest of time,'' says John Stubbs, program director of the World Monuments Fund. ``The Vietnamese can possibly learn from others' mistakes.''

It is by no means clear that they will, though. Outside investment has pushed both ways. Dozens of spacious villas in the old French quarter have been restored to their original splendor by foreign companies eager to establish offices from which to cash in on Vietnam's 9% annual growth rate. Demand for commercial and residential space has pushed rents to Hong Kong and Tokyo levels. As a result, many investors would rather replace the old three-story buildings with office towers. Late last year Hanoians looked on in wonder as demolition crews razed the historic--though architecturally undistinguished--prison known as the ``Hanoi Hilton,'' where hundreds of captured American servicemen spent much of the war. In its place, a Singapore developer plans a 22-story hotel-and-office complex.

The area most at risk, the city's ancient quarter, is being dismantled not by foreign investors but by Vietnamese entrepreneurs. Established hundreds of years ago by craftsmen who moved to the banks of the Red River to be near the markets of the capital, Hanoi's ``36 streets'' district was once home to 60 temples, shaded by the red-tile roofs of old shop-front ``tube houses''--so called because many, as deep as 50 m, are only 2 m to 3 m wide. Now the neighborhood is becoming dominated by boutiques, bars and ``mini- hotels'' of cheap cement and glass. ``The ancient city is being destroyed,'' says Mayor Hoang Van Nghien. He is also concerned that the huge dikes that protect Hanoi from the Red River may collapse under the weight of new homes and hotels, causing a devastating flood.

As Vietnam's first businessman mayor, Nghien intends to run Hanoi with the same determination he used to build the country's biggest electronics conglomerate, Hanel Co. Amid great fanfare last fall, officials rolled out the city's first master plan in nearly a century. It aims to preserve Hanoi's historic center with strict height restrictions on new buildings. As in Paris and London, modern office towers and apartment blocks will be pushed to the outskirts of town. The plan, which has yet to be implemented, also provides for new regulations governing sewage treatment and power generation, details that have never been seriously considered in Hanoi. ``We're working on a development plan that looks ahead 30 years,'' says Nghien. ``If people build in the wrong places, their houses will be removed.''

But reform has unleashed a freewheeling, often defiant, disregard for authority among a traditionally obedient populace. ``The only law here is supply and demand,'' says city economist Nguyen Quy Lan. The race to make money has bred corruption within an already unresponsive bureaucracy. Regulations are routinely ignored. Smuggling and prostitution, once confined to Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, are rampant. Consider Hanoi's top-draw weekend entertainment event: midnight motorcycle races through the streets. When police showed up at 3 a.m. on Christmas Day with paint guns and electric batons to put an end to a big race, the crowd of several thousand threw stones at their jeeps.

The mechanics of Hanoi's urban renewal would make any big-city mayor blanch. Renovating even a modest old building can require relocating as many as a dozen families into alternate housing, as American officials discovered when they tried to reclaim the former U.S. consulate, which they plan to take back this month. Nghien hopes Hanoi's new foreign friends will put up the $2 billion it will take to rebuild the city's ancient infrastructure. ``We are not going to be another Bangkok,'' he vows. It is going to be a long, hard fight, but that is something Hanoians are used to.