Civilizing the City: Socialist Ruins and Urban Renewal in Central Vietnam

Abstract

The shift to “market socialism” has brought rapid and profound changes to urban landscapes in Vietnam. Focusing on the fate of socialist architecture and urban design under contemporary urban redevelopment and renewal plans, this essay explores the transformation of Vinh City, capital of the province of Nghệ An, from a center of socialist utopian modernity and postwar urban recovery to a symbol of urban blight and late socialist decay. Destroyed by aerial bombing during the war with the United States, Vinh City was redesigned and rebuilt in the postwar years with East German aid, technology, and urban planning expertise. A primary focus of urban reconstruction was Quang Trung communal housing, consisting of eighteen hundred apartments and dormitories in five-story buildings that housed more than eight thousand residents, mainly workers and veterans in need of housing after the war. Since 2004, sections of Quang Trung have been demolished and replaced with a trade center and high rise condominiums. Based on ethnographic and historical research in Vietnam and Germany, the essay traces new strategies of urban governance that endeavor to reorder and redesign city space through acts of architectural destruction and reconstruction that likewise infuse capitalist logics and values, such as privatization and self-actualization, into the cityscape. Emerging geographies of neoliberalism in Vietnam are shown to be contingent upon the pathologization of socialist “ruins” and urban practices, and their eradication from the landscape of urban memory. Visual spectacles of demolition thus signify new aesthetic and economic regimes that link capitalist redevelopment and redesign to the formation of modern, prosperous, and “civilized” cities and citizens.

In Search of a Post-Socialist Mode of Governmentality

“…With an explicit aim to follow the developmental state, the party-state has employed a number of such programmes with neoliberal elements in manag ing and disciplining the population. However, evidence suggests that although technical practices were based on the neoliberal standards of compliance such as assessment, transparency and accountability, they were substantially recon figured and reworked within the Vietnamese contexts (Truitt, 2012;Pashigian, 2012;Schwenkel, 2012). As a result, the influence of neoliberalism in Vietnam has been found "not powerful" (Gainsborough, 2010), despite of its significant implications.…”

Traveling Architecture. East German Urban Designs in Vietnam

“…Thus, as noted above, foreigners identify an urban housing complex in Vinh as "Soviet", a term that suggests architectural drabness and uniformity, in contrast to the presumed creativity of capitalist forms. 13 Yet recent work has revealed architecture under socialist regimes to be more heterogeneous and experimental than is commonly acknowledged. 14 Even communal dormitories in Russia were designed as "futuristic experimental prototypes", 15 and surely we cannot dismiss the Russian embassy in Havana -dubbed "the robot" -from the catalogue of modern architectural wonders (see figure 1).…”

Improvement of Air Quality and Thermal Environment in an Old City District by Constructing Wind Passages

“…Over the last few decades, along with the urban renewal process currently in place in mega cities, many subsequent serious problems concerning society [10][11][12][13], politics [14][15][16], economy [17][18][19], history [20,21], and culture [5,22] have continuously emerged. Those problems have attracted worldwide attention ever since.…”