Many apartment buildings in Vietnam are oddly located deep down small alleys, creating inconvenience and difficulty for residents living in the structures and along the narrow passageways.

My Phuoc, a three-block apartment complex down a small alley on Bui Huu Nghia Street in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City, is home to 540 flats and over 2,000 residents.

According to managers of the blocks, about 170 automobiles and 1,000 motorbikes are owned by the residents, creating heavy traffic pressure on the seven-meter-wide passage.

Several cafés, convenience stores, and eateries also attract people entering and exiting the alley.

Traffic jams often happen on the passageway, Nguyen Thi Chuot, a flat owner said, adding that it could barely fit two cars.

“The developer did mention a road expansion when I bought the flat some ten years ago. However, renovation has never been carried out ever since,” Chuot elaborated.

Luong Thuy Man, a resident living along the alley, complained that her life has been heavily impacted by the big volume of traffic.

“Kids cannot play outdoors while adults also need to pay attention to the traffic,” she said.

A similar situation can also be seen at My Duc Apartment Building on Xo Viet Nghe Tinh Street in Binh Thanh District, which shares the same developer as the My Phuoc building.

The apartments, which are home to 740 households, along with their 150 cars and 1,500 motorbikes, are located at the end of a 10-meter-wide alleyway.

Residents at an 18-story apartment building in Ba Dinh District, Hanoi, have also reported immense difficulty when curving their way through a 400-meter-long alley to get access to their homes.

A local citizen expressed his concern over how fire trucks could approach the venue if a fire broke out.

Several apartment complexes are under construction at similar locations throughout the Vietnamese capital, placing enormous pressure on local infrastructures and traffic upon their completion.

Irreversible

According to a construction official in Ho Chi Minh City, the situation arose from poor city planning.

Developers of the apartment complexes were only responsible for constructing the buildings and premises, while the roads leading to the facilities will be taken care of by the state, the official elaborated.

A probe by Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper showed that every project has to be approved by the municipal Department of Planning and Architecture regarding several aspects.

However, the approval is often based on a planned map, in which some infrastructure categories, including proper roads, do not exist in reality.

An inspector from the Hanoi Department of Construction stated that the developers did not violate any rule in such a case.

According to Bui Trung Dung, an official from the Ministry of Construction, it is hard to determine who is to blame in this circumstance as many agencies have been involved and many procedures carried out.