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.''