Designing Future Cities in Contemporary Vietnam
A Workplace Ethnography of Vietnamese Architects and Planners
In my PhD research, I am studying the motivation behind the making of new urban complexes in Vietnam from the perspective of developers, planners, and architects. My aim is to understand what drives them to create these urban spaces and how they imagine the ‘ideal city.’ I want to observe how their visions are influenced, translated, and negotiated during the planning and construction process, from the initial idea until the final construction. Collectively, these professionals have incredible power to shape the world through their work—covering swamps, islands and villages in concrete, demolishing pasts, and building futures. They also influence the conduct of everyday life: By putting entertainment and consumption at the centre, developers blur the line between tourism and residential living. As they set their aspirations in stone, they also erase other potential futures.
The real estate market in Vietnam is increasingly driven by domestic and Asian tourists and the affluent urban middle class. This new focus on attracting regional tourists has led to a continuing development of large-scale European-style towns across Vietnam. Even newer developments put the Vietnamese urban middle class at the centre. They include commercial and public areas to attract daytime visitors, but the main focus is on attracting long-term residents. Again, these new cities reference foreign places in their design and include concepts of urban living by integrating lakes, golf courses and walkways into their plans. Planners create entire cities, including public spaces and commercial areas, referencing both historically and geographically distant places. Currently under construction in Vietnam are the shopping-boulevards of Vienna, the hanging gardens of Babylon and the canals of Venice. They aim to capture and re-create the atmosphere of these places in a way that makes them easily recognizable. Instead of building exact copies, they focus on particular aspects that are associated with these places, like famous sights and activities.
Putting the professionals involved in the planning processes at the centre of my research allows me to understand how their individual knowledge, aesthetics, and beliefs shape urban planning and the meanings attached to particular cities and urban forms. The sketches and maps they create are products of a specific idea of what a city could and should look like. Through workplace ethnography at architectural firms located in Ho Chi Minh City, I observe how initial visions are transformed through negotiations with the stakeholders involved, from municipal authorities to architects to builders, all of whom have different backgrounds, perspectives, and aspirations. I trace projects in the Southeast region of Vietnam from their conception to implementation to show the existing power dynamics at play and how ideas of beauty and urban living are transformed through the planning process. I also ask what happens when the planned projects are not realized. Are there feelings of disillusionment with capitalism's continuous cycles of destruction and construction?
Beyond the motivations for creating these new urban developments, it is yet unclear, what all of this might mean for other Vietnamese cities in the future. On the one hand, these recent practices may represent a departure from existing forms of referencing, where other cities serve as role models in a global hierarchy of cities. They offer room for experimentation and interpretation of styles, pointing towards shifting global hierarchies of taste. On the other hand, it is unclear how the focus on entertainment and leisure central to new concepts of urban living might address the challenges of existing Vietnamese cities grappling with pollution, traffic and social inequalities.