In most cities, walking into a park is a small, deliberate act. You adjust your route, find a gate, and cross from public pavement into a separate space with its own implicit rules.
Hanoi has decided to dismantle that idea. Across four of the Vietnamese capital's major parks — Cầu Giấy, Bách Thảo, Thống Nhất, and Indira Gandhi — the city has been removing the iron fences that long marked their edges. The gates are coming down. The boundaries now blend into surrounding streets and sidewalks. Residents can walk in from any direction, at any time, as part of their commute rather than a detour.
At Thống Nhất Park, one of the first sites in the program, more than two kilometres of fencing has been pulled down, connecting the park directly to the surrounding street grid. The change in foot traffic was immediate.
"Now people can enter and exit from many directions, making access much more convenient and significantly increasing usage," said Nguyễn Tiến Quang, vice chairman of Hai Bà Trưng Ward. "The park is no longer just a place to visit. It has become directly integrated into residents' daily lives."
A simple change, a different city
Early mornings and late afternoons now draw a broader cross-section of residents than these parks ever saw before — elderly exercise groups, young families, international visitors, students, and office workers cutting across on their way home.
"Before, we had to walk far to get in through the main gate," said Hoàng Thị Hiền, a resident of Thanh Xuân Ward. "Now I can enter the park from anywhere. It feels open and natural, like it's part of my neighbourhood."
At Bách Thảo Park, the change has pulled in younger visitors. "We are seeing more young visitors coming to take photos, picnic and children playing in areas newly connected to sidewalks," said Nguyễn Thị Lành, head of the park's maintenance team. The city also dropped entrance fees at the same time, which made the new openness accessible across income levels.
Why a fence matters more than it seems
Architect Phạm Anh Tuấn of the Hà Nội University of Civil Engineering draws a distinction worth thinking about: physical access and felt access are not the same thing.
"Even before the fences were removed, access to parks was not particularly difficult," he said. "However, in terms of spatial organization, removing the fences has created a much more open environment. More importantly, it brings a sense of closeness. Parks become a natural part of daily life."
A fence, even one that's unlocked, sends a message. It marks the park as a different kind of space, and entering it requires a decision. Without that boundary, the park reads as part of the street instead of an exception to it.
That shift in perception is also reshaping how people see the surrounding neighborhoods. At Indira Gandhi Park, "the open views help reduce the sense of congestion from surrounding concrete blocks, creating a softer transition between urban spaces," said Nguyễn Anh Dũng, vice chairman of Giảng Võ Ward.
Urban planners have long argued that green space is most powerful when it is woven into the daily fabric of a city rather than set off as an island. Hanoi is now testing that idea at scale.
New openness, new headaches
The shift has not been frictionless. Higher foot traffic has brought new challenges around illegal parking and unauthorized vendors at some entrances, and park managers are having to spread oversight across the perimeter rather than concentrating it at a few gates.
The consensus, though, is that the trade is worth it. Parks once defined by where they ended are now defined by who uses them — and across Hanoi, the answer to that question is becoming much larger.
