On analyses of Vietnam's urban system is evolving and connective infrastructure in Vietnam.

Most studies on urbanisation focus on the move of rural people to cities and the impact this has, both on the cities to which the people have moved, and on the rural communities they have left. This book, on the other hand, considers the impact on rural communities of the physical expansion of cities. Based on extensive original research over a long period in one settlement, a rural commune which over the course of the last two decades has become engulfed by Hanoi’s urban spread, the book explores what happens when village people become urbanites or city dwellers – when agriculture is abandoned, population density rises, the value of land increases, people have to make a living in the city, and the dynamics of family life, including gender relations, are profoundly altered. This book charts these developments over time, and sets urbanisation in Vietnam in the wider context of urbanisation in Southeast Asia and Asia more generally.

Vietnam is facing the challenge of trying to keep pace with increasing environmental pollution associated with rapid urbanization, especially in the larger cities. Over the past 20 years, the Government of Vietnam has made considerable effort to develop urban sanitation policies, legislations and regulations, and to invest in urban sanitation including wastewater treatment systems. This study is one of three country studies conducted in the emerging countries of Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia as part of the East Asian urban sanitation review. It reviews the effectiveness of the wastewater sector in Vietnam and makes recommendations to the Government on actions to scale up the sector to improve its performance. Lessons that emerge from this study can be considered for the on-going and or the next generation of wastewater systems.

Much rare material is incorporated in this unique account of urbanization in a developing country that was ravaged by war for twenty years. With due emphasis on the experience of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), the authors present an account of what happened to the towns and cities of Vietnam between the establishment of Ho Chi Minh's socialist state in 1954 and the mid 1980s. The story is introduced through a general theoretical and empirical account of urbanization in socialist Third World countries. The book stresses the importance of the turmoil created by warfare in directing urbanization, but it also refers to the more conventially studied determinants of the process such as the institution of a planned economy. As one of the few books highlighting the impact of warfare on urban settlements, The Price of War will interest all those interested in urbanization, development and South-East Asia. This book was first published in 1986.

In the late 1990s, planning authorities in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi pushed the imaginary line between city and country several kilometres westward, engulfing dozens of rural settlements. As state policies forced rapid urbanization, villagers whose families had farmed the land for generations saw rice fields levelled, irrigation canals filled, and large avenues flanked by residential towers, big-box stores, and office buildings spring up. Danielle Labbé considers a century of change to the settlement of Hoa Muc – a community that underwent a rapid transition from rural village to urban neighbourhood. Through extensive research in the community, Labbé studies not only the changing lives of villagers, but also the state regulations and territorialization projects that drove these changes on the outskirts of Hanoi, and the early urban changes in the decades that preceded the reforms and continue to influence the area’s urbanization. Despite the new buildings, the end of farming activities, and the arrival of a large new population, the former villagers still consider Hoa Muc their homeland. The compelling story of this single village is both a portrait of a population that has endured despite drastic upheavals and a new analytical window onto Vietnam’s ongoing urban transition.

This report provides a comprehensive assessment of Viet Nam’s urban policies and analyses how national spatial planning for urban areas, along with specific sectoral policies, directly and indirectly affect Viet Nam’s urban development.