Allan Appel
Mayor Phan Trong Vinh of New Haven’s sister city of Hue, Vietnam, said he liked the local beer and, of course, Frank Pepe’s pizza. He also was curious about matters non-culinary: how the Elm City, for instance, balances the pressures of economic development with historic preservation.
Vinh and representatives of Amalfi, Italy, another of New Haven’s seven sister cities, were both on hand Tuesday evening for a reception in their honor held at Yale University’s visitor center on Elm Street.
Before he made the tourists stops, Vinh visited with City Plan Department staff. Hue has an old and historic center around which infrastructure sprung up helter skelter after the war, he said through a translator. His challenge: to upgrade the infrastructure without harming the old 18th century royal architecture.
The translator said Vinh came away with some tips on how to manage such initiatives.
Hue became a sister city of New Haven in 1994, a national first and a controversial move shortly after normalization of relations with Vietnam by President Bill Clinton. Amalfi became the city’s first participant in the New Haven Sister Cities Program in 1982, decades after the national initiative began in 1956 in Eisenhower administration. Many of New Haven’s families trace their roots to the coastal paradise in Southern Italy.
“Like the Peace Corps, it’s about promoting peace. It’s more difficult to dislike people once you’ve met them,” said the Director of Cultural Affairs Department Barbara Lamb, whose trip to Hue in June led to Vinh’s visit.
Lamb said she will lead a tour to Hue next year, New Haven’s first. Amalfi has exchanged students, chefs, musicians, and basketball players with New Haven since 1982.
In the offing for next year is a scientific database of all Amalfitani who emigrated to New Haven, according to Imma Lauro (left), of the Amalfi Council, who represented her town at the reception.
“There isn’t an American who comes back from any of these exchanges without saying it’s changed my life,” said Trish Pearson, a past president of New Haven Sister Cities.
The other sister cities are Avignon, France; Afula-Gilboa in Israel; Leon, Nicaragua; Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Lamb said that most recently the mayor of Tetlanohcan in Mexico approached Mayor DeStefano to begin the sister city process, since hundreds of its sons and daughters have come to live in New Haven. Tetlanochan, about an hour from Mexico City, was officially designated the seventh sister city last spring.