Presenting the Report on receiving, explaining and revising the draft Law on Urban and Rural Planning, Chairman of the Economic Committee Vu Hong Thanh said that the draft Law after being received, revised and completed includes 6 chapters and 65 articles; 2 articles were removed and 2 articles were added compared to the draft Law submitted to the National Assembly at the 7th Session.

Affirming the necessity of promulgating the Law on Urban and Rural Planning, delegate Vi Duc Tho (Son La) emphasized that the promulgation of the Law will create a legal basis and a synchronous, comprehensive and unified management tool to regulate urban and rural planning activities; overcome shortcomings, limitations, inadequacies and difficulties and obstacles in practice, meet the requirements for the country's development, enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of state management, and ensure the harmony of interests of the State, people and society.

Notably, the relationship between planning under the Urban and Rural Planning system and planning under the national planning system has been specifically regulated in the 2017 Law on Planning. Clause 4, Article 6 of the Law on Planning stipulates: urban planning and rural planning must be consistent with national planning, regional planning, and provincial planning.

Discussing at the meeting, many opinions assessed that Urban and rural planning is a technical and specialized planning in the national planning system, but there are no clear and specific regulations on the relationship between technical and specialized planning and between technical and specialized planning and other planning in the national planning system. Therefore, opinions agreed that this is a content that needs to be considered very carefully and cautiously to clarify the suitability of the investment project with national, regional and provincial planning when considering investment policies, avoiding causing difficulties in the implementation process.

Commenting at the meeting, delegate Pham Thi Thanh Mai (Hanoi) said that regarding urban zoning and detailed urban planning, the draft Law stipulates that drawings showing the content of urban zoning are made at a scale of 1/5,000 or 1/2,000. However, according to the Housing Law 2023 and the Land Law 2024, one of the conditions for bidding to select investors to implement projects using land is to have a detailed plan or a zoning plan at a scale of 1/2,000 approved by a competent authority.

Delegate Pham Thi Thanh Mai said that in urban areas where zoning plans at a scale of 1/5,000 have been established, bidding for investors will not be conducted according to the Land Law. To ensure consistency between the Housing Law, the Land Law and the field of construction planning management, the delegate proposed adding a clause in Article 65 to provide transitional regulations for localities that have zoning plans at a scale of 1/5,000, which are allowed to organize bidding for investors. In case of necessity, localities that have zoning plans at a scale of 1/5,000 are allowed to re-establish zoning plans at a scale of 1/2,000.

Sharing the same concern, delegate Duong Khac Mai (Dak Nong) commented on Article 36 of the draft on collecting opinions from the community. Basically agreeing with this provision, delegate Duong Khac Mai stated that collecting opinions from the community on planning is extremely necessary to demonstrate democracy, openness, transparency and best completeness for planning. However, urban and rural planning is specialized, with many terms, drawings... and not all people understand it clearly, as well as the level of education is not similar, access to planning by people in remote areas is still limited...

Therefore, in order to have good planning, ensure people's consensus, and avoid formalities in collecting opinions, delegate Duong Khac Mai suggested that in addition to regulating the collection of community opinions on urban and rural planning as in the draft, it is necessary to consider adding agencies and organizations that make plans responsible for classifying specific contents that need to be collected, transforming simpler contents, identifying key issues on technical infrastructure, social infrastructure works, housing, etc. associated with residential areas so that people can give their opinions.

From the current planning shortcomings in practice, delegate Duong Khac Mai suggested that the content of the draft Law needs to properly and harmonize all types of planning such as minerals, land, regional planning, provincial planning, etc. to create a good development space for localities; create a basis to remove difficulties and contribute to solving negative impacts on socio-economic development, current bauxite planning as mentioned in the draft Law on Geology and Minerals so that the implementation of urban and rural planning is synchronized, truly creating development momentum.

In addition, National Assembly deputies also focused on discussing a number of related contents such as: the relationship between plans; the principle of simultaneously establishing general plans; handling cases of conflicts between urban planning and rural planning; general planning of centrally-run cities; planning period; urban zoning planning; communal general planning; authority to approve and adjust urban and rural planning; regulations on transitional cases...