Lisa Drummond

Middle Class Landscapes in a Transforming City: Hanoi in the 21st Century

During the 20-plus years of Đổi Mới (economic renovation) policy, the spatial fabric of Vietnam’s cities has undergone significant transformation. In a now-familiar pattern from cities the world over, Hanoi has predictably though with alarming rapidity developed outward into seemingly ever-expanding suburbs, and upward into high-rise hotels and apartment complexes. More importantly, the landscape of urban everyday life has been resculpted through middle-class practices of consumption, actual and aspirational, with effects on modes of shopping, leisure, transportation, and, critically, attitudes towards the use and users of public space. In this chapter I consider the impact of socio-economic reform on the capital city of Hanoi, focusing specifically on the ways in which the middle class, made possible by Đổi Mới, has and continues to alter the urban landscape. I also consider some of the ways in which the middle class and its material manifestation in the city may be influenced by its specific historical context.

Introduction: Who Are the Urban Middle Class in Vietnam?

In 1933, a young urbanite married and took his new bride to live in a simple thatched hut in a village near Hanoi’s West Lake. This would not have been a remarkable event to be recorded by historians, except that the young man was Thạch Lam, a famous writer of the Tự Lực Văn Đoan (the Self-Reliance Literary Group) (Hồ Sĩ Hiệp, 1996, p. 64). The Tự Lực writers were all educated, well-to-do urbanites who wrote about the modernizing and globalizing effects of colonialism on Vietnamese society. Thạch Lam’s older brother Nhất Linh, after dabbling in medicine and fine arts, went to Paris to study science. Thạch Lam himself attended the prestigious Lycee Albert Sarraut and then became a journalist and writer. His choice of a thatched hut for his matrimonial abode was a deliberate act to demonstrate his love for simple and rural living—to show that even though he could speak fluent French, drink wine, and frequent trendy cafes, he also knew how to appreciate a supposedly traditional peasant life. Furthermore, his rustication was a demonstration of his artistic ability to transform simplicity and coarseness into comfort and elegance.

Planning for global environmental change in Bangkok's informal settlements

Government agencies in cities across Asia recognise that municipalities must take steps to adapt to projected climate changes if people and places are to be kept above water. This paper focuses on planning for climate change in Bangkok because it ranks among the top 10 port cities vulnerable to climate change related flooding. It is also understood that the most devastating impacts of climate change will be suffered by the citys most vulnerable residents: the poor. Not only do impoverished people occupy physically vulnerable space, such as riverbanks, but they are also the least equipped to recover from the disruption of their livelihoods. Several scholars have identified “institutional traps” that prevent the Thai government from successfully aiding poor and marginalised flood victims in the past. These include poor coordination, lack of monitoring and evaluation, rigidity, crisis management and elite capture. Lebel, Manuta, and Garden (2011, 56) pose the crucial question: “How have individuals – from local community leaders through to national level politicians and bureaucrats – successfully influenced policy and programmes to avoid institutional traps and improve adaptive capacities to climate change?” In this paper, we begin to address this question through examining emergent methods of “community based adaptation” and reviewing case studies of adaptation action from other vulnerable communities in the Global South. These lessons – such as overcoming institutional rigidity and avoiding elite capture – are important for Bangkok and other cities in the Global South that face many different challenges by global environmental change.

Sustainable Flows Water Management and Municipal Flexibility in Bangkok and Hanoi

There is widespread recognition that cities in the Global South need to transition toward sustainable water practices. This is particularly true of places experiencing growth and impacts from climate change concomitantly, as are Bangkok and Hanoi. We evaluate case studies in each of these two Southeast Asian cities to explore possible sustainable water management practices that their urban communities, and others experiencing similar issues, could adopt in the near term. Our analysis of these case studies supports four key conclusions: Simple expansion of rigid infrastructure does not necessarily meet local needs for water, communities can themselves provide insights and creative models, governments at any scale can be flexible and such flexibility can achieve appropriate solutions, and small-scale experimentation can and does work and can be successfully scaled up with government encouragement and support.

Hanoi 5000 Hoan Kiem Lakes: Using Art to Involve Young People in Urban Futures

Abstract In March-April 2007, a group of six Hanoi-based artists staged an exhibition of entitled “Hanoi 5000 Hoan Kiem Lakes”. Its purpose was to explore young peoples visions of the future of their city and to stimulate discussion of the citys development from a non-planning perspective. To prepare for the exhibition, the artists undertook a survey among the youth of Hanoi, distributing a one-question questionnaire and interviewing on and off camera over 250 young people, randomly and selectively sampled in parks, on sidewalks, outside universities, and in university and school classes. Participants were invited to a workshop held by the artists at the exhibition to talk about how ideas get translated into art. This exhibition provided a timely intervention into debates over the landscape of Hanoi, what urban public space is and what it should be, and how non-technical, non-specialist views of the city can be incorporated into urban aspirations, thus acknowledging and encouraging the visions of the young people who will be the citys future leaders.