I snapped this photo at the corner of Nguyen Du and Truong Dinh in district 1. It's a great example of the juxtaposition of "old Saigon" and "new Saigon." Slowly but surely, decaying buildings and infrastructure are giving way to shiny new buildings and bridges. It's changing the character of the city. Of course, some will lament that something is lost, and they're right. But something is gained too. Change is unstoppable, and brings the good with the bad.
It's a real shame, though, when historic old buildings are demolished to make way for plain-vanilla office towers (see Beijing). The Society for Historic Preservation is a bit, ahem, underfunded in Saigon.
There are tons of similar-sized office buildings going up all over districts 1 and 3. Judging from all the "for rent" signs, I imagine each new building contributes to the surplus of space on the market. No doubt all this space will be absorbed over the next 2-3 years though. I can feel things starting to pick up again, slowly but surely.
I think the building on the left is a residential building. Looks like it's at least 50 years old. What's your professional opinion, chu Mel?
POST UPDATE: Thanks to readers Tyler and Mel, the old building has been identified as the Meyerkord BOQ from back in the day. I found this roughly 40 year old pic on the internet. Looks like time has been unkind to the Meyerkord.