Critical reflections on land appropriation and alternative urbanization trajectories in periurban Vietnam

Vietnam's land regime is currently undergoing a radical reshaping under policies of “urbanization and modernization.” Around large urban centres what could be called a “Third Land Reform” fosters massive land-takings for urban-industrial expansion. The forced appropriation of farmlands unsettles endogenous patterns of mixed-use development or “rural-urbanization” which have developed in these zones since the đổi mới, and which are characterized by the combination of small-scale cottage industries with mixed employment, and commuting into the cities for jobs and trade. The Third Land Reform is driven by an official discourse of “modernization” that deems the endogenous rural-urbanization as backward (not modern). This discourse drives and defends an aggressive programme of expropriation, to the benefit of corporate capital, to build “real” urban spaces. Foreign, planning scholars should not merely describe these processes, but point out the ideological justifications driving them, and the ways in which the things it rejects as non-viable may, in fact, have virtues that have been missed by the official view

Gentrification or...? Injustice in large-scale residential projects in Hanoi

Large-scale residential developments on expropriated lands in periurban Hanoi resemble forms of gentrification seen elsewhere. But is it gentrification? Current debate over the definition of gentrification has focused on whether the term has become too broad to be useful in different institutional and spatiotemporal contexts. While some push for a generalizable definition based in capitalist development, others argue that the term harbors Western assumptions that fail to usefully explain unique local circumstances. The paper first identifies one such conceptual assumption that must be made explicit since it provides the term’s politicizing thrust: displacement generates an experience of social injustice. Then, drawing on surveys and interviews with residents as well as interviews with real estate agents, government officials, and academics conducted in Hanoi between 2013 and 2017, the paper evaluates five types of displacement on the city’s outskirts. Because displacement only occurs in marginal cases and generates limited feelings of social injustice, the term “gentrification” is of little use. Instead, the paper suggests that in a context of rapid urbanization and relatively inclusive economic growth like that of Hanoi the terms “livelihood dispossession” and “value grabbing” may better capture the experience of social injustice and are therefore more likely to generate political traction

Shortcomings of an idealized urbanity : ghost urban areas and the asynchronous territorial development of Hanoi

This paper examines the recent emergence, on the periphery of Hanoi, of large real estate projects that began construction during the 2000s but have now remained unfinished or, even when completed, largely uninhabited. These “ghost urban areas,” as the local press calls them, epitomize some of the problems which emerged in Hanoi when a model of urban development that aimed at realizing an imagined urban future, formulated by state planning agencies, encountered the highly speculative reality of Vietnam’s property market. Ghost urban areas reveal how the state’s planning orientations and discourse—conveying ideals of urban “modernity,” “civility,” and particularly “synchrony”—instead generated dysfunctional, incomplete, and disconnected places. Based on a survey of thirty-nine ghost urban areas, a cartographic analysis, interviews with key actors, and a critical study of policy documents, this paper reveals multiple scales and forms of what we call “asynchronous territorial developments.” Around Hanoi, these developments involve vast tracts of agricultural lands forcibly appropriated yet left fallow, planned infrastructure and amenities that stay unbuilt for indefinite periods of time, and housing units transacted multiple times among speculators but have remained largely uninhabited and out of reach for a majority of urban households. Ultimately, we interrogate how these various territorial asynchronies, both generated by and plaguing ghost urban areas, shape their livability and inhabitants’ experience

Youth-driven tactics of public space appropriation in Hanoi : the case of skateboarding and parkour

Starting in the 2000s, there has been a rise in youth-led appropriation of public spaces in Hanoi, Vietnam. Through case studies of skateboarders and traceurs (practitioners of parkour) in two of the city’s formal public spaces, we explore and analyze the tactics deployed by these young urbanites to claim a part of the characteristically overcrowded and socio-politically restrictive public spaces of the Vietnamese capital. These case studies show that, by seeking to access public spaces for their new activities, skaters and traceurs have had to confront multiple sets of rules, imposed by not only the state, but also corporate actors and resident-driven surveillance. We find that skateboarders and traceurs deal with these forms of control largely through small-scale, non-ideological, and non-confrontational tactics. As a result, these youth practices have become normalized in Hanoi’s public spaces. These findings broaden the discourses on everyday urbanism and social-political transformations in post-socialist urban contexts, and shed light on the ways in which contemporary youths engage with the city

L’immobilier residentiel : principal moteur de la fabrique urbaine de Ho Chi Minh Ville

À partir du cas de l’aménagement du district 2 et de la Nouvelle Zone Urbaine de Thủ Thiêm cet article explore le contexte au sein duquel prend place l’accroissement du rôle des acteurs privés de la promotion immobilière dans la production métropolitaine de Ho Chi Minh Ville et ses effets sur la fabrique des nouveaux territoires urbains. Alors que le marché immobilier résidentiel de la métropole du sud du Vietnam est l’un des plus dynamiques en Asie du Sud-Est, les pouvoirs publics s’appuient sur les acteurs de ce secteur afin de produire les infrastructures nécessaires au développement territorial et économique de la métropole. Malgré la mise en place de garde-fous, des dérives apparaissent et participent à la dilapidation d’actifs publics dont la vente est supposée financer l’urbanisation en cours.Using the case of the district 2 and Thủ Thiêm New Urban Area, this article explores the growing importance of private property developers in Ho Chi Minh City and its effects on the production of new urban territories. While the residential property market of Ho Chi Minh City is among the most dynamic in Southeast Asia, the local government relies on private developers and investors to produce the infrastructure needed by the metropolis and to ensure its economic and territorial growth. Despite existing safeguards, official rules and regulations are bypassed, contributing to the dilapidation of public assets meant to finance the ongoing urbanization

Association between recreational screen time and sleep quality among adolescents during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada

The study objective was to verify whether recreational screen time was associated with sleep quality among adolescents during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Data collection took place in four high schools in the region of Chaudière-Appalaches (Quebec, Canada) from the end of April to mid-May 2021. Recreational screen time and sleep quality were measured using the French versions of validated questionnaires specifically designed for adolescents. A total of 258 adolescents (14–18 years; 66.3% girls) answered the online survey. Adolescent boys had a higher total mean recreational screen time (454.3 ± 197.5 vs. 300.5 ± 129.3 min/day, p < 0.0001) and a higher total mean sleep quality score (4.2 ± 0.9 vs. 3.9 ± 0.8, p = 0.0364) compared to girls. Recreational screen time (β = −0.0012, p = 0.0005) and frequency of concurrent screen use (sometimes: β = −0.3141, p = 0.0269; often: β = −0.4147, p = 0.0048; almost always or always: β = −0.6155, p = 0.0002) were negatively associated with sleep quality while being a boy (β = 0.4276, p = 0.0004) was positively associated with sleep quality and age (p = 0.6321) was not. This model explained 16% of the variance in adolescents’ sleep quality. Public health interventions during and after the COVID-19 pandemic should target recreational screen time, concurrent screen use and especially girls to possibly improve sleep quality and promote adolescents’ physical and mental health

Psychosocial correlates of recreational screen time among adolescents

The study objective was to identify the psychosocial correlates of recreational screen time among adolescents. Data collection took place in four high schools from the Chaudière-Appalaches region (Quebec, Canada) from late April to mid-May 2021. A total of 258 French-speaking adolescents (69.8% between 15 and 16 years and 66.3% girls) answered an online questionnaire based on the Reasoned Action Approach. Recreational screen time was measured using the French version of a validated questionnaire. Adolescents reported a mean of 5 h and 52 min/day of recreational screen time. Recreational screen time was associated with being a boy (β = 0.33; p < 0.0001) and intention to limit recreational screen time to a maximum of 2 h/day (β = −0.15; p = 0.0001); this model explained 30% of the variance in behavior. Intention to limit recreational screen time to a maximum of 2 h/day in the next month was associated with attitude (β = 0.49; p < 0.0001), self-identity (β = 0.33; p < 0.0001), being a boy (β = −0.21; p = 0.0109), perceived behavioral control (β = 0.18; p = 0.0016), and injunctive norm (β = 0.17; p < 0.0001); this model explained 70% of the variance in intention. This study identified avenues to design public health interventions aimed at lowering recreational screen time among this population

A value-based comparison of the management of ambulatory respiratory diseases in walk-in clinics, primary care practices, and emergency departments : protocol for a multicenter prospective cohort study

Background: In Canada, 30%-60% of patients presenting to emergency departments are ambulatory. This category has been labeled as a source of emergency department overuse. Acting on the presumption that primary care practices and walk-in clinics offer equivalent care at a lower cost, governments have invested massively in improving access to these alternative settings in the hope that patients would present there instead when possible, thereby reducing the load on emergency departments. Data in support of this approach remain scarce and equivocal. Objective: The aim of this study is to compare the value of care received in emergency departments, walk-in clinics, and primary care practices by ambulatory patients with upper respiratory tract infection, sinusitis, otitis media, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis, influenza-like illness, pneumonia, acute asthma, or acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Methods: A multicenter prospective cohort study will be performed in Ontario and Québec. In phase 1, a time-driven activity-based costing method will be applied at each of the 15 study sites. This method uses time as a cost driver to allocate direct costs (eg, medication), consumable expenditures (eg, needles), overhead costs (eg, building maintenance), and physician charges to patient care. Thus, the cost of a care episode will be proportional to the time spent receiving the care. At the end of this phase, a list of care process costs will be generated and used to calculate the cost of each consultation during phase 2, in which a prospective cohort of patients will be monitored to compare the care received in each setting. Patients aged 18 years and older, ambulatory throughout the care episode, and discharged to home with one of the aforementioned targeted diagnoses will be considered. The estimated sample size is 1485 patients. The 3 types of care settings will be compared on the basis of primary outcomes in terms of the proportion of return visits to any site 3 and 7 days after the initial visit and the mean cost of care. The secondary outcomes measured will include scores on patient-reported outcome and experience measures and mean costs borne wholly by patients. We will use multilevel generalized linear models to compare the care settings and an overlap weights approach to adjust for confounding factors related to age, sex, gender, ethnicity, comorbidities, registration with a family physician, socioeconomic status, and severity of illness. Results: Phase 1 will begin in 2021 and phase 2, in 2023. The results will be available in 2025. Conclusions: The end point of our program will be for deciders, patients, and care providers to be able to determine the most appropriate care setting for the management of ambulatory emergency respiratory conditions, based on the quality and cost of care associated with each alternative

On the edge : a history of livelihood and land politics on the margins of Hà Nội

This dissertation takes an historical approach to explore the territorial formation processes on the near periphery of Hà Nội, the capital city of Việt Nam. It relies on methods inspired by the ethnographic tradition to document how a small locality, named Hòa Mục, has made the shift from rural village to urban neighbourhood over the course of the 20th century. The analysis centres on the evolution of villagers‟ livelihoods and land strategies in relation to the ebb and flow of state regulations and territorialization projects. Secondary literature and policy documents contextualize this micro-study and position it within the wider framework of socio-political and institutional changes in Northern Vietnam. The results are presented chronologically along four broad historical stages: i) the late colonial era (1920-1940), ii) the socialist revolutionary transformation process (1940-1960), iii) the anti-American war and subsidy era (1960-1980), and iv) the đổi mới reforms (1980-2009). By placing the periurban formation process in a longer historical context, the study shows that some territorial orders from the pre-reform period have travelled across different political-economic regimes and thus continue to influence the ongoing urban transition. This provides an important counterpoint to understandings of state policy as key determinants of urban change in contemporary Việt Nam. The discussion instead shows how local practices and norms interact with the state‟s regulatory function to shape the periurbanization process. As part of this dynamic system, the state responds in flexible ways to territorial claims from the grassroots and to emerging socio-spatial configurations on the urban edge. The case of Hòa Mục, thus indicates that the state can and does rely on systems of exceptionalism, deliberate institutional ambiguity, and the selective reproduction of informality to govern urbanization on the edge of the capital. In a context like that of Việt Nam, this suggests the need to enlarge the repertoire of what we call planning activities.Applied Science, Faculty ofCommunity and Regional Planning (SCARP), School ofGraduat

A drift in a sea of global urban research

John Friedmann (2005: x) recently wrote that most of the scholarly accounts of urbanization in China “are essentially snapshots taken at a single point in time that will soon acquire the feel of a distant, bygone era”. Beyond its application to the China case, Friedmann’s comment conveys a common impression among students of world urbanization, constantly grappling with the challenge of keeping up with a multifaceted and rapidly changing phenomenon. The collection of essays assembled by Birch..