Korean Developers in Vietnam: The Mechanism of Transnational Large-Scale Property Development and Its Planning

Abstract

Abstract:Since neo-liberalism emerged in the 1980s, private actors have started to take a primary role in urban planning and foreign private developers became important actors, especially in urban development in developing countries. In order to investigate the mechanism of large-scale property developments by foreign developers, this paper focused on three cases developed by Koreans in Vietnam and investigated their similarities in development processes, and the resultant urban forms through analyzing relevant documents and conducting a series of in-depth interviews. As a result, a common strategy employed by Korean firms was to build villas first and apartments later, which would distort the resultant urban form. Conflicts with local governments over the provision of public facilities were another feature shared by these projects, and the provision of urban infrastructure, in turn, was scaled down during scheme changes. While previous studies argued that neglecting urban infrastructure has been a common feature of developments influenced by the privatization trend, foreign developers have more financial burdens and risks than their domestic counterparts, which increases the possibility of such neglect.

Land developers as institutional and postpolitical actors: Sites of power in land use policy and planning

“…Charney, 2007; Coiacetto, 2006; Lawton et al. 2013; Ruming, 2009; Sabbi and Mensah, 2016; Weinstein, 2014), and the privatization of planning (Jung and Lee, 2017; Shatkin, 2016), only a few studies examine developers’ influences within land use planning institutions and focus on their roles within postpolitical planning exercises (Legacy et al., 2018; Macdonald, 2018). And while some researchers, especially in the global South (e.g.…”

Diasporic capital and the financialisation of housing in Ho Chi Minh City

“…Urban studies research has historically prioritised FDI over remittances since the latter was considered merely family aid. Research on real estate in Vietnam has followed this trend, focusing empirically on FDI and its constitutive actors and processes against a backdrop of rapid globalisation and integration (Jung and Lee, 2017; Kim, 2020). This has limited policymakers’ collection of national and international statistics on remittances, leading to unreliable estimates (Alvarez et al, 2015) and limiting understanding of their impact on urbanisation.…”