The New Urban Areas of Hanoi: Continuity or Fragmentation in a City Environment?
Large residential complexes mushroom on city outskirts, as Viêt Nam enters an accelerated rate of urbanization. The “ew urban zones”are causing sociospatial and socioeconomic fragmentation, while some foreign researchers compare these new suburban zones to “gated communities” and criticize the perverse effects of privatization, commodification, and securitization –central concepts in the literature on neoliberalization. This theoretical framework seems inappropriate for Viêt Nam, even if criticism of the negative aspects of this urbanization model continues to be a necessity. Rooted in studies on two new urban zones on the periphery of Hanoi City, this article analyzes sociospatial and socioeconomic fragmentation at three phases of their life cycle; namely, conceptualization and funding, construction and realization, as well as everyday living practices. This approach casts light on the many “eweaving”and negotiating practices linking the new zones and neighbouring districts; and finally, it identifies the real causes of urban fragmentation: the principles of modernist planning and property speculation.