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Special Issue

Youth negotiations: Navigating public space access and urban planning transformations in Hanoi, Vietnam

Accéder à l’espace public et manœuvrer dans la planification urbaine. La négociation de l’espace par les jeunes à Hanoï (Vietnam)
Madeleine Hykes et Sarah Turner
p. 149-170

Résumés

Depuis le milieu des années 1990, les autorités municipales de Hanoï ont encouragé un développement urbain rapide sans impliquer les usagers. Des communautés résidentielles encloses, de hauts immeubles en bloc et de vastes centres commerciaux prolifèrent au même rythme que les nouvelles infrastructures de transport. Si ces transformations bénéficient à certains, elles confrontent d’autres à une marginalisation croissante. Sur base d’un travail de terrain à Hanoï, et inspirées par les débats sur la politique au quotidien et sur la jeunesse dans les espaces publics (postsocialistes), nous analysons la perception et la réaction de la cohorte hétérogène des jeunes face à ces changements. Préoccupés par l’augmentation de la pollution et la diminution des espaces verts, les jeunes cherchent de nouveaux espaces « pseudo-publics » pour leurs loisirs. Beaucoup se méfient des sources d’investissement pour les nouvelles infrastructures et déplorent le manque d’accès à l’information. S’ils ne disposent que de possibilités limitées pour exprimer leurs préoccupations face aux plans de développement assertifs de l’Etat, les jeunes ne sont pas passifs. Par-delà leur diversité socioéconomique, ils développent une gamme de tactiques pour manœuvrer dans les transformations et les politiques en cours. Leur parole témoigne de leur capacité d’innovation face aux scénarios urbains de l’avenir.

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Introduction

  • 1 The Master Plan was designed by a group composed of: New York Architect Firm, Perkins Eastman, and (...)

1Youth in Vietnam’s capital city Hanoi are not unfamiliar with rapid urban change in their city —they have spent much of their life growing up amidst it. In August 2008, the Prime Minister abruptly announced that Hanoi’s boundaries would triple in size, effectively doubling the city’s population overnight to 6.2 million (Prime Minister of Hanoi 2008). Officials working for both the central Vietnamese state and its capital city’s municipality are determined to fashion Hanoi into a mega-city, with promises that it will be sustainable, prosperous, civilised, and modern (Coe 2015). Underpinning this vision is the 2011 “Hanoi Capital Construction Master Plan to 2030 and Vision to 2050” (Socialist Republic of Vietnam 2011). Designed with input from US and South Korean consultants, this plan details how Hanoi will expand into an assemblage of urban core and satellite cities to accommodate a projected population of ten million by 2030 (current population circa 7.7 million).1

2Both Vietnamese and foreign private contractors are constructing large gated communities and residential areas in and around downtown Hanoi. These projects attempt to combine the Master Plan’s “pillars” of order, modernity, and sustainability with the residential, entertainment, commercial and aesthetic desires of the growing middle- and upper-classes. This urban overhaul involves increasing connectivity via both public and private transit, including the deployment of a bus rapid transit system (BRT) and the construction of an elevated metro system (Nguyen & Do 2017; Nguyen 2017). Although the BRT is operational, the metro system has experienced numerous delays, and questions have been raised regarding its viability (Loan 2020; Nguyen et al. 2019). Concurrently, the government has been investing heavily in transportation corridors, highways, and expressways —despite the conceptually contradictory nature of these developments vis-à-vis sustainability. For these transport initiatives to come to fruition, residents have experienced the destruction of houses and shop-fronts, the widening of alleyways, and the reorganisation of entire neighbourhoods (Hien et al. 2020; Hüwelmeier 2018; Karis 2017; Kim 2011). Despite sleek advertising campaigns and official praise, concerns have been raised by Hanoi-based Vietnamese architects regarding the lack of local input into the process and design flaws (Ashui 2009), while overseas commentators have noted that the lack of coherence and vision in the transport policy “calls into question its ability to solve mobility problems” (Leducq & Scarwell 2018: 74).

3When it comes to voicing opinions regarding urban renewal and transportation policies in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, there are few officially supported platforms for everyday citizens —including youth— to have a voice (Kerkvliet 2019). It is common practice for official sources to note that “widespread consultation” took place prior to policy implementation, yet this frequently refers to feedback received from hand-picked state employees. Söderström (2014: 72) explains that Hanoi’s urban-planning can “be seen as an aesthetic and political exercise, but it can also be seen as a useful smoke-screen behind which real development takes place”. In this political context it can be difficult to find a safe platform to air frustrations, despite growing opposition to specific plans and projects (Gregory 2016), and while youth are beginning to speak out via a range of platforms, these acts require patience and courage (Gillespie & Nguyen 2019).

  • 2 While we follow the census definition of youth, it should be noted that the Vietnam Youth Law defin (...)

4Youth between the ages of 18 and 30 represented close to 26 percent of Hanoi’s population in 2014 (General statistics office of Vietnam & United Nations population fund 2016).2 Today, individuals in this demographic group are coming of age in a socioeconomic climate drastically different from their parents and grandparents, without the direct experiences of war (Nguyen 2002). In Hanoi, today’s youth are thus set to inherit a built environment significantly different from twenty to thirty years ago (ibid.). Concurrently, changes in access to international media, overseas travel, and education, along with rising incomes mean that state-society relations are shifting.

5A review of recent literature on youth in Southeast Asia spans diverse topics from the rise of Thai youth subcultures in response to rural-urban migration (Cohen 2009), youth (sub)culture in public and online spaces in China (Frangville & Gaffric 2020), to Indonesian youth perspectives regarding upward mobility (Nilan et al. 2011), and surveillance-based and anxiety-fuelled relationships between adults and adolescents in Singapore’s public spaces (Skelton & Hamed 2011). Less research has explored youth reflections on the rapid urban changes occurring across the region. Regarding Hanoi specifically, there is a nascent body of literature focusing on university graduate expectations (Nguyen 2002), the livelihoods of youth entrepreneurs (Turner & Nguyen 2005), state membership amongst youth (Valentin 2007), youth activist approaches (Geertman & Boudreau 2018), youth perceptions of access to public spaces (Pham et al. 2019) and youth skateboarders and traceurs (Geertman et al. 2016), however none to our knowledge that focuses on youth opinions of the rapid changes in Hanoi’s urban-form occurring around them. Our aim therefore, is to investigate the opinions and responses of young adults (18–30) regarding the changing urban landscape they are set to inherit in their capital city, Hanoi. We ask: How do youth access public space in a rapidly privatising city? What do youth think of specific state initiatives for Hanoi? How do they negotiate state policies regarding Hanoi’s urban-form? And what are their suggestions regarding future plans for the city?

6Next we outline our conceptual framework synthesizing debates regarding youth and public space, with a focus on post-socialist settings, and everyday politics. We then contextualise our research by briefly outlining recent policies and changes, all strongly supported by the municipal and central state governments, that directly impact Hanoi’s urban-form. We analyse the opinions voiced by youth from across different socioeconomic classes regarding these recent urban-form changes including how they access different spaces and their concerns regarding specific policies. Finally, we explore their visions for the city’s future and interpret how they negotiate the realities of Hanoi’s current urban-form.

  • 3 Debate continues regarding the usefulness of defining social class in both post-socialist and Asian (...)

7Fieldwork was conducted in Hanoi during summer 2017 by Madeleine Hykes who fits the Vietnam definition of youth, and during autumn 2019 by Sarah Turner who sadly does not. Methods included semi-structured interviews with 40 youth between the ages of 18 and 30, and participant observation in a range of public and pseudo-public spaces across the city. Youth were interviewed through a combination of random sampling and snowball sampling at a range of public (Lenin Park, Hoàn Kiếm Lake, and West Lake) or pseudo-public sites (e.g. outdoor areas of Times City and Royal City). Interviews were conducted in Vietnamese with a Vietnamese research assistant, except a few conducted in French or English. Two-thirds of youth respondents had lived in Hanoi their whole lives, while the remainder had migrated from nearby provinces. While we aimed for gender parity, 60 percent of youth respondents were women, likely due to our own gender. To be able to focus on the roles that socio-economic class might play in shaping uses of space, and consumption and leisure patterns, the broad socioeconomic classes of youth participants were determined via four factors: consumption habits, transportation means, consumer items, and level of education (cf. Drummond 2012). Based on these factors, we categorised 32 percent of youth respondents as lower socio-economic class, 50 percent as middle-class, and 18 percent as upper-class.3 Eight semi-structured interviews with academics and urban planners were also completed covering related themes.

Conceptualising debates regarding youth in public space and post-socialist cities, and everyday politics

Youth, public space, and post-socialist cities

8The ambiguity and lack of consensus around the definition of “youth” affects how this cohort is perceived, researched, and treated in society (Skelton 2013; Valentine 2019). Official definitions frequently identify youth via a specific age range (e.g. 16 to 25), despite academics debating the usefulness of such definitions and possible alternatives (Bourdieu 1993; James 1986; Pilcher 1994; Valentine 2019). Youth are often constructed as a cohort that is inherently reactive to “power”; as individuals who actively “negotiate with, or oppose, the dominant ideology or subvert dominant meanings by actively appropriating and transforming those meanings” (Hall & Jefferson 1976; Valentin et al. 1998). Valentine (2019) adds that the category of “youth” refers to a period of transition and is a consequence or response to a specific current cultural climate, a generational perspective echoed in Pilcher (1994). Nonetheless, ambiguity or dissonance between official definitions and societal conceptions fosters a dynamic whereby “adolescents are denied access to the adult world, [but] they attempt to distance themselves from the world of the child” (Sibley 1995: 34). This dynamic, as we detail shortly, becomes evident in the options for, and uses of, urban spaces.

9Past research has sought to understand how this cohort experiences, accesses, and navigates public space. For example, authors focusing on Sweden have studied the importance of public spaces for retreat and interactions amongst youth (Lieberg 1995), and youth experiences taking public transit (Lagerqvist 2019). Scholars have also analysed how youth use public space to “hang out” beyond the gaze of adults in San Francisco and Finland (Pyyry & Tani 2015), and how these spaces can strengthen group identity, such as in the Netherlands (Lieshout & Aarts 2008). The attempts of local government in New Zealand to have youth involved in urban planning processes has also been focused upon (Freeman & Aitken-Rose 2005). Across the globe, youth presence in public spaces is often met with surveillance and control from an adult or government gaze (Skelton & Hamed 2011). Exclusionary tactics are both implicit (lack of public consultation) and explicit (youth groups targeted for dispersal) (Rogers 2006, 2010) and, even when youth are relegated to a certain type of “play” space, they can still encounter poor or unequal access to quality spaces (Smoyer-Tomic et al. 2004).

10In post-socialist cities more specifically, relatively structured life trajectories have now given way to increasing flexibility over employment opinions, travel, and romantic life (Nguyen 2002). Youth are now living and making decisions in a period where “institutions, processes, and social norms” that were once central to transitioning into adulthood have either entirely dissipated or are undergoing major change (Mojic 2012). Liu (2010) has suggested that within post-socialist regimes such as China (and we would add Vietnam) there exist two regimes of subjectification which often come into tension with one another in relation to youth. While the Chinese and Vietnamese one-party states continue to expect citizens to respect the filial devotion and strict hierarchy they impose, the conflicting narratives and subsequent tensions produced by increasing integration into the global economy can create internal struggles amongst today’s urban youth (Frangville & Gaffric 2020; Liu 2010). Past research has delved into state-youth relations in Vietnam in the context of rapid socioeconomic change (Nguyen 2006) and how this post-war generation can concurrently “reject and yet reaffirm the traditions of national history” (Schwenkel 2011: 134).

11In Vietnam, there is a small but growing body of literature on youth and public spaces (e.g. Drummond & Nguyen 2009; Valentin 2008). While formal public spaces, such as parks and squares, theoretically provide outdoor spaces for youth to socialise, play sport, and relax, recent case studies in Hanoi have found that the uneven dispersion of these city spaces and concerns over safety hinder youth from accessing these sites equally (Boudreau et al. 2015). The use of certain public areas by youth and other residents also leads to negotiations and compromises regarding which groups can be present in given spaces at certain times (Coe 2015; Geertman et al. 2016; Hornidge & Kurfürst 2011). While located in a socialist state, with the specific tensions this brings for youth, our work builds conceptually on the recent youth and public space debates identified above, including identity, access, and negotiations, to focus on Hanoi’s urban-form plans and their localised impacts.

Everyday politics and youth

12Also informing our analysis is the conceptual idea of everyday politics. Kerkvliet (2009: 232) defines everyday politics as “people embracing, complying with, adjusting, and contesting norms and rules regarding authority over, production of, or allocation of resources and doing so in quiet, mundane, and subtle expressions and acts that are rarely organised or direct”. He then specifies four forms of everyday politics, namely “support, compliance, modifications and evasions, and resistance” (ibid.: 233). These actions are rarely overt in nature, such as street protests or active civil disobedience, but are covert actions that do not necessarily have political intent. Vinthagen & Johansson (2013: 10) add that everyday resistance refers to an act “done routinely, but which is not politically articulated or formally organised”. This approach allows for an intersectional analysis that recognises how subaltern identities often straddle multiple spheres of privilege or domination (Johansson & Vinthagen 2016). Given that the youth we interviewed occupied a variety of positions of power afforded to them through their different ages, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, and gender, we draw on this approach to analyse how their possible everyday politics to a range of state- and private-led urban changes might take different forms.

13Many observers of Vietnam state-society relations assume that today’s youth are not particularly interested in political debates, being more focused on money and their own lives (Kerkvliet 2019). If they are interested, youth face possible punishment not only from their parents but also from “school administrators, the police, and other authorities” if they speak up on political matters (ibid.: 70). Nonetheless, as made clear in demonstrations against China in 2011 and 2015, students have often been prominent demonstrators in recent years. In Hanoi, protests —including important numbers of youth— to projects impinging on access to green space (Coe 2015), or the removal of over 6,000 trees discussed shortly (Kurfürst 2016), has crystallised via a range of forms, both digital via social media platforms, or physical via open protest or less overt “tree-hugging” (Geertman & Boudreau 2018).

14Bringing together key debates from literature on youth and public spaces, with a focus on youth in post-socialist cities, and youth and everyday politics allows us to better understand the societal restrictions, surveillance, and expectations often placed on youth in Hanoi, how youth interact with societal norms and rules, and how these negotiations play out in “mass media, urban spaces, public parks, youth centres, shopping malls, cultural complexes and local street corners” (Bayat 2010: 119).

Hanoi’s rapidly changing urban-form

15During interviews we asked youth for their reactions to and concerns over the rapid urban processes occurring in Hanoi. From these discussions, nine urban-form policies or changes emerged inductively as core thematic codes. These included: concerns over foreign investment; the rise in gated communities and large-scale apartment blocks; “greening” the city; an urban rail network; the bus rapid transit system; protests over tree felling; a future ban on motorbikes; a ban on street vending; and a “clean up the sidewalk” campaign. Each is briefly introduced next.

16Pre-Covid-19, Hanoi was a top “destination” for foreign investment in the Southeast Asia region. In 2019, Hanoi’s foreign investment of $ 8.45 billion accounted for 22.2% of the national total (Ministry of Planning and Investment 2020). Nationally, top investors in 2019 were from South Korea ($ 7.92 billion), Hong Kong ($ 7.87 billion), and Singapore ($ 4.5 billion) (Vietnam News 2019). While foreign investment has supported large infrastructure projects, such as highways and expressways, nearly a third (approx. 31.2% in 2018) has been in the form of residential and commercial hubs (Preet 2019; Tam 2019).

17Shopping malls, gated communities, and apartment blocks have proliferated across Hanoi’s peri-urban landscape in recent years. Despite gated communities ostensibly offering wealthier Hanoians the ability to retreat from the perceived chaos of the city’s streets (Provost & Kennard 2016), this “promise of a reformed urbanity” often falls short of reality (Jacques et al. 2017: 89). Amidst the swathes of greenery shrouding these locales are a growing number of vacant units, or “ghost areas” created through speculative development, questionable financial management, and contradictions between state visions and urban realities (ibid.).

18The most recent Master Plan emphasises “greening” the city via green corridors, linear parks to engender leisure space, and green belts (Söderström & Geertman 2013). Despite municipal decrees, other formal calls to increase available social infrastructure, and the recommendation of 70% green space in the 2011 Master Plan, realities have fallen short. Recent surveys show that increases in total park area between 2000–2010 were predominately concentrated in private urban developments, and hence not equitably distributed nor easily accessible by all (Pham & Labbé 2018).

19In 2008, the creation of an urban rail network or metro, outfitted with eight lines and spanning 318km was approved, with the first line, Line 2A, under construction since 2011 (Leducq & Scarwell 2018). Originally slated for completion in 2016, the inauguration has been pushed back multiple times, now announced for 2020 (Tatarski 2017). Spanning 13 km, Line 2A has encountered more than just construction setbacks with its reputation tarnished by contractor choice, numerous accidents, and public scepticism over accessibility and convenience (ibid.). This portion of the metro line has received investment from China, Japan, and France with a reported cost of $ 845 million to date and is being constructed by a Chinese consortium (Reconnecting Asia n.d.; Thuy 2019). Nguyen and Do (2017) suggest that residents’ lack of interest to use the metro is strongly influenced by the continuing “ease of use and self-decision making ability” of alternative transport, such as motorbikes and cars.

20To complement the urban rail network, a new bus rapid transit (BRT) system was installed in 2016. Considered by authorities as the “key to sustainable development” (C40 Cities 2019), and financed through World Bank loans, this $ 53.6 million-dollar development spans 14.7 km with its own traffic lights and lanes (Nguyen 2017). Despite free BRT transport during January 2017 and incentives such as e-cards with reduced fares, public transit ridership remains low (ibid.; C40 Cities 2019). In 2018, the BRT reportedly served 5.3 million passengers, only half of its full capacity (Urbanist Hanoi 2019). Reasons reported in the media for this are linked to heavy traffic, narrow lanes, and inefficient services (ibid.). Concerns are now rising as to whether the BRT and metro will work in concert to bolster public transportation or if they will create conflict in the urban spatial form (Nguyen et al. 2019, 2020).

21Partly due to the metro construction, a tree-felling initiative in 2015 removed 6,708 trees located along 190 streets (Vu 2017). Public outcry and collective action subsequently fuelled a “broad-based citizen-led movement” known publicly as the “Trees Movement” (ibid.: 1182). While membership to this movement encompassed people of all ages, genders, and occupations (albeit probably not many state officials), the role of young activists was particularly important. As Gillespie and Nguyen (2019: 978) add, these protests “disrupted the government’s expectations about who can participate in urban governance”. Online platforms were essential to the organisation of these manifestations and to the circulation of images and videos (ibid.).

22In 2015 an estimated 4.9 million motorbikes navigated Hanoi’s streets (Hansen 2015). The municipal government has partially attributed worsening congestion, pollution, and noise to the density of motorbikes (usually 50–150cc scooters) (ibid.). In 2017, the Department of Transportation announced a bold plan to reduce road congestion and noise pollution: to ban motorbikes from core city areas by 2030. As for the public transport initiatives above, whether the government will successfully separate residents from their motorbikes remains debatable (see Figure 1).

23In 2008, in yet another initiative to reorder urban space, municipal authorities enacted a street vending ban spanning 68 streets and 48 public spaces (Turner & Schoenberger 2012). While vendors actively negotiate this ban and continue to ply their trade through a range of resistance strategies (ibid.), authorities continue to regulate the streetscape to instil a “modern” veneer. Moreover, in 2017, municipal authorities launched a “Clean-Up the Sidewalk Campaign” that targeted not only street vendors, but resulted in the forced removal of motorbikes, advertising materials, and even concrete ramps leading into homes (Huy 2017). These attempts to remove “obstacles” from pavements and streets to increase walkability are implemented somewhat haphazardly and inconsistently, while impinging on residents’ rights to access the city’s streets and pavements.

Figure 1. One of Hanoi’s mega-malls

Figure 1. One of Hanoi’s mega-malls

One of Hanoi’s growing number of mega-malls with the metro-line under construction and daily motorbike traffic.

© Sarah Turner 2014.

Youth negotiations in and visions for Hanoi

24In this rapidly changing context, Hanoi’s youth negotiate how they use public spaces, while shaping opinions with regards to specific state initiatives. We focus on these two elements next.

Accessing “Public Spaces” in a rapidly privatising city

25Public space in Vietnam is produced through a series of functionalist policies outlining criteria for spatial qualities, management, and the overall protection of public spaces, while often overlooking social dimensions and spatial distribution (Pham & Labbé 2018, see also Boudreau et al. 2015). When asked, 35 of our 40 respondents provided their own definitions of public space, all of which, regardless of socioeconomic class, included a variation of “the space where everyone can go”. These were sites that respondents acknowledged still had rules and regulations, but that provided access to fresh air and relaxation. Examples youth listed of public spaces included fairly standard examples such as parks, squares, and lakes, but interestingly two-fifths included what might be considered “private” or “pseudo-public” sites such as cinemas or shopping malls, where access is at the discretion of corporate owners (Wang & Chen 2018).

26For example, 18-year-old Giang, a lower-class woman living with her family described public space as:

the places which people can gather together, chatting, talking and playing, with entertainment. You can do whatever you want to do, don’t have to be scared of anyone, but of course you should be aware of the rules and respect other people around you (July 18, 2017).

Likewise, 22-year-old Toan, a middle-class Hanoian, noted that: “Public space is the space where people can communicate; like a park”, adding that “a shopping mall can be considered public space too” (August 10, 2017). Kieu, a 21-year-old middle-class woman added that public space included:

the parks, the malls, the lakes. There’s definitely not enough public space here. Kids especially need more space to play in the city. There is much more emphasis on the buildings than on public space (July 14, 2020).

When asked about their use of “public space” (as they defined it) and their preferences, two-thirds of respondents spent the majority of their leisure time in what we would term pseudo-public spaces following Mitchell (1995) and Drummond (2000). Namely, they listed cafes, shopping malls, or cinemas, while the remaining third reported using a mix of public and pseudo-public spaces, or just public spaces. Despite all social classes accessing pseudo-public spaces of shopping malls, lower- and some middle-class youth frequented these sites with little intention to spend money, whereas upper-class youth noted these sites as places to shop and eat. As Nhân, a 22-year-old middle-class youth explained:

  • 4 All names are pseudonyms that correspond with the interviewee’s sex.

Hanoi doesn’t have places for young people to hang out, so we go there for fun, for playing around, and entertainment but we don’t have enough money to shop at these malls (July18, 2017).4

27Of the youth who spent the majority of their time in pseudo-public locales, younger unmarried youth, typically between the ages of 18 and 24, frequented cafes, shopping malls, or cinemas with their friends. Older youth, over 25 years old, spent their leisure time in similar places, but also noted restaurants, coffee and tea shops, and bia hơi (draft beer) drinking spots as favoured locations. As they grew older, youth —both married or single— noted that they had outgrown certain leisure sites, such as “hanging out” in shopping malls. However, parents with young children reflected that they had returned to malls for their children to play because, as middle-class Quy, a 30-year-old mother of two explained, “in the parks, there’s nothing for them to play with or to entertain them” (July 21, 2017). Dieu, another middle-class young mother, added “honestly I sometimes take them [two young children] to the mall just to run around because it’s got air conditioning” (November 5, 2019) (see Figure 2).

Respondents frequently complained of diminishing open green spaces in the city and the increase in restricted pseudo-public sites for leisure. This loss of public space had caused youth to use the city differently. Linh, an 18-year-old upper-class young woman living in Long Biên District with her parents explained that since a dyke near her home was destroyed:

it’s more difficult now for me to hang out with my friends because the street is bigger and more dangerous. We used to go there because there was grass and we could fly kites, but now it’s all cement (August 11, 2017).

28Other youth avoided areas around new mega-malls such as Times City or Royal City because of extreme traffic congestion. Overall, with two-thirds of respondents noting their preference for indoor pseudo-public sites for leisure, as well as an overwhelming feeling that there has been a decrease in outdoor public spaces, youth were frustrated that their public space options were becoming increasingly limited.

Figure 2. Young parents with their children playing in an upscale shopping mall

Figure 2. Young parents with their children playing in an upscale shopping mall

© Sarah Turner 2019.

Youth opinions regarding specific state initiatives

29Youth were quick to share their opinions of specific government plans and actions. While a quarter of respondents supported the construction of a metro system, a further two-fifths felt that it had potential to be a positive development for the city but that it was problematic due to questionable quality, construction accidents, and limited platform accessibility (e.g. lack of motorbike parking or steep stairs). We were initially surprised by how few youth wanted to try the metro when it is completed —only five respondents. Yet, with some of the investment from China, Đung, a 25-year-old upper-class, recent university graduate, explained:

The main problem with public transportation is that we prefer investors with high credibility, not China. Vietnamese people don’t trust China for a quality product (July 30, 2017).

Accidents, delays, and the cost of the project itself were additional factors deterring the willingness of youth to test it. Thảo, a lower-class 20-year-old, was conflicted in her opinion, explaining:

The metro is good because I live close to it and it’ll help reduce pollution and traffic jams. But the construction is bad because they’re cutting down all the trees and it’s destroying the atmosphere (July 24, 2017).

Nearly a quarter more respondents said that they did not support the metro at all. Upper-class Mai noted she would only use the metro “if the government enforces the motorbike ban in 2030” (July 21, 2017), while middle-class Hai elaborated:

I did some research and I’ve already seen that there’s been accidents during construction. So even when it’s done, I don’t want to use it (July 12, 2017).

30Overall, the government’s plans and construction approach for the elevated railway, including a reliance on overseas finance from neighbouring China, evoked uncertainty, doubt, or a “wait and see” approach.

Focusing on the tree felling initiative outlined earlier, Minh, a 21-year-old lower-class university student bluntly noted:

the government isn’t doing a good job. For example, they cut down all these old trees, and no one knows where the money went that they got from selling them! (August 3, 2017)

Thị, a 29-year-old middle-class women living with her husband and child took a similar stance:

I think Hanoi lack trees, the atmosphere’s too polluted, the city cut down a lot of trees in the past few years so [it’s always] sunny and hot; the weather is changing, the climate is changing, people get sick very quickly (July 20, 2017).

Similarly, when we asked Nhan, a 22-year-old middle-class woman, to explain more broadly why she felt Hanoi was losing its character, tree felling was her principal example. Overall, the loss of these trees fuelled a sense of frustration among youth regarding the state’s lack of transparency.

31When discussing the proposed 2030 motorbike ban, two-thirds of our respondents noted that while the initiative seemed good in theory, there were a range of concerns that would need to be resolved before it could —or should— become a reality. These sentiments can be summed up as “it’s good, but....”. Over half of respondents pointed to low quality and inconvenient public transportation options and the lack of suitable infrastructure for alternative vehicles to motorbikes, especially when accessing the city’s numerous small alleyways that cars cannot access. Concerns were also raised over the high cost of car ownership and how the ban might affect social mobility (see also Mortenson 2019). A vocal minority, one-quarter of respondents, did not support the ban in any shape, arguing either that it was entirely “incompatible with Vietnamese culture”, or that the ban would be a disaster due to unsatisfactory government planning. For a generation that has grown up riding motorbikes, many felt that motorbike culture —including the right to private motorbike ownership— was synonymous with Vietnamese culture itself, regardless of one’s social class.

32Youth respondents were likewise unimpressed by the 2017 “Clean Up the Sidewalks Campaign” that aimed to clear sidewalks of motorbikes, street vendors, and other uses deemed “improper”. Similar to responses regarding the motorbike ban, nearly two-thirds of respondents considered this campaign as “it’s good, but....”. The general line of thought was that while this policy had created more space and made sidewalks cleaner and more orderly, street vendor livelihoods had been ignored. With regards to both this campaign and the ban on street vendors trading in specific core streets and public spaces, opinions tended to be pro-vendor. A few respondents had close relatives impacted by the street vendor ban, such as Quý, a middle-class youth who noted:

My mother-in-law trades on the street so she has to run away when the police come (July 21, 2017).

Respondents noted that both these policies would only make sense if they were implemented evenly and consistently, with support for vendors to ply their goods elsewhere. For example, Vũ, a middle-class 19-year-old felt that:

For street vendors, this [vending ban] is a problem and shows a lack of investment in poor people. They should be built or given a market and a stable place to work and sell (July 17, 2017).

33However, as Daniel et al. (2015) have shown, a project shifting informal vendors from the periphery of the former Hàng Da market to the basement of a multi-storied shopping mall built where the market once stood, has left many facing a marked decline in sales, with some abandoning this livelihood.

34The “Hanoi Capital Construction Master Plan to 2030 and Vision to 2050” highlights terminology such as “modern”, “green”, “sustainable”, “liveable”, and “culture/cultured” to emphasise Hanoi’s transformation and future, stressing the importance of balancing development and modernisation with the preservation of culture and heritage (Socialist Republic of Vietnam 2011). While youth agreed that Hanoi was becoming more “modern”, many did not view the current urbanisation trajectory as conducive to the greening nor sustainability of the city, also noting a number of incompatibilities with Vietnamese culture. Youth spoke of the “wiping out” (Binh, November 11, 2019) of what made Hanoi unique in terms of cultural attributes, such as green open spaces, trees “from the colonial days”, and wide boulevards, with replacements seen as “standard boring city design like you’d find in the US” (ibid.).

Inadequate access to information

35While a few youth were shy to talk about their political views —not surprising given the political context and that we were unknown to them— others were more open. Within a top-down planning context, and with the state-approved media still heavily censored, 80% of youth respondents said that they wanted more information regarding current and future plans. They noted that there was a distinct lack of access to information and transparency regarding both general plans for the city’s urban-form and specific initiatives, adding that they commonly knew nothing about state plans until construction begun. As lower-class Toan explained:

All the plans to develop the city are under the city authorities’ control; young people like us don’t know anything but we want to learn more about these plans before they start being implemented (July 20, 2017).

Youth found this opacity extremely frustrating because it meant not even knowing what information they were missing. Ha, a 25-year-old middle-class woman, argued that:

Because youth play an important part in the development process and in the city’s future plans, they need to be updated on news that comes from the government. So far, they receive unofficial information that may be wrong. How can they know if it is wrong? (July 24, 2017).

When youth searched for information on the city’s changing landscape, the majority found sources beyond government television channels. Ngọc, a 23-year-old living in Tây Hồ District expressed:

In order to learn about the change of the city, I learn from Facebook, on my phone app, on the internet; I don’t watch [state censored] TV (July 19, 2017).

Future plans

36Youth were unhappy that official decision-making regarding the future of their city excluded their voices. They noted that the state not only ignored the needs of youth, but that their importance as drivers of future economic and national development was being completely disregarded. We therefore asked respondents what their own initiatives might look like, if they were given the opportunity to plan the future urban landscape. Responses were innovative and diverse, ranging from how to address traffic and pollution problems, to constructing condos and living quarters that were sustainable and green. Hai, a middle-class 22-year-old proposed:

The city I want to have is one that’s sustainably developed. If they want to put in a factory, they also have to think about the waste and clean up the environment (July 12, 2017).

Middle-class, 25-year-old Đung added:

If I had power, my initiative would first be to handle transportation, then I’d fix the road system, but these two go together...I want to deal with industrial pollution too. You know there are many industries in the city centre, lots of industrial zones, and air and water pollution. A lot of countries, like China, outsource activities here because it’s very cheap, Vietnam shouldn’t be a wasteland for other countries. By upgrading, we can solve this issue (July 17, 2017).

37There was ongoing emphasis placed on “upgrading”, “planning”, “sustainably developing”, and “solving”—all components that youth respondents did not see currently occurring across the city, despite being outlined in the current Master Plan. Moreover, respondents noted that to create positive change an important shift in attitude and awareness among the majority of Hanoi’s residents was going to be required. Hoa, a middle-class, 24-year-old woman expressed this bluntly:

The government can create more policies to make the city better but actually it’s mainly up to the awareness of people. We should realise how important it is to make our city more green or cleaner; don’t throw garbage or waste into our streets, put the refuse in the right place like public garbage bins, don’t throw litter into lakes (July 19, 2017).

38This awareness and broad range of suggestions highlight numerous lost opportunities for the state to involve youth in collaborative initiatives to support the city’s future development; if that were ever to become a priority.

Youth negotiations and everyday politics

39Until the early 1990s it was rare for people in Vietnam to openly criticise the state. While such critiques might be whispered amongst trusted family and friends, citizens were well aware that speaking or acting out against the state could bring serious consequences, including imprisonment and punishments for family members (Cain 2014; Gregory 2016; Nguyen 2019). Since the mid-1990s, public political criticism has been on the rise, helped by informal networks and the rapid growth in social media, while state officials have responded with “a combination of responsiveness, toleration, and repression” (Kerkvliet 2019: 3; Wells-Dang 2010). Due to this ongoing uncertainty around state responses, we found that the youth with whom we spoke relied upon a range of “everyday politics” to resist state plans. Apart from open protests regarding tree fellings reported upon elsewhere, we found most youth respondents cautious in their negotiations of state plans and policies (see also Geertman & Boudreau 2018). Their responses were not always articulated as being political nor were they formally organised.

40As part of their everyday politics, some youth respondents modified state-led policies, such as the “Clean Up the Sidewalks Campaign”, by supporting the ideas underpinning it —being positive about clean and ordered streets— but also working around the regulations to continue, in the case of youth street vendors, to ply their goods for trade. Three youth vendors we interviewed agreed with the general campaign principles of keeping the streets tidy and being respectful of local residents, but argued that they also had to make a living and that stopping vending was not an option. They had therefore decided to continue to vend while being more alert to officials who might confiscate their wares or fine them for pausing on sidewalks. As another example, youth using pseudo-public spaces including shopping malls for “hanging out” or as children play-areas were modifying how property owners hoped customers would act (purchasing goods and services).

41With regards to state visions for public transport, Hanoi youth respondents were more direct in their resistance. Some explained that they protested the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system by actively driving their motorbikes in BRT-only lanes (see Figure 3). Hau, an upper-class 30-year-old explained her logic for doing so:

The city government doesn’t have enough initiative, the traffic is too much! The BRT is there but it’s still not effective. For example, when the bus isn’t there, the BRT lane just takes up space, so I go [drive] in the BRT lane sometimes if I’m late, even if I’m not supposed to (July 13, 2017).

42Others reiterated that the hiring of a Chinese developer for the metro line, and the deployment of the metro system itself had been poorly managed and the project elicited harsh criticism, many being adamant that they would not use the line when completed. For both these public transportation endeavours, youth justified their resistance by highlighting the incompatibility with the current urban environment, and by linking motorbike usage to contemporary Vietnamese culture (Hansen 2017; Nguyen et al. 2020).

Figure 3. Drivers illegally taking the designated BRT lane

Figure 3. Drivers illegally taking the designated BRT lane

© Sarah Turner 2019.

43We found youth respondents tended to articulate concerns about a specific project or policy rather than voicing a blanket disapproval of the state, although a general frustration regarding a lack of information concerning state policies was clear (similar to findings elsewhere in Vietnam by Turner et al. 2016). In other words, youth resisted “power” where and when they felt was appropriate, in their own inventive ways (Johansson & Vinthagen 2016).

Concluding thoughts : Heterogeneous concerns, common frustration

44While youth are often defined as a transitionary cohort responding to a specific cultural climate (Valentine 2019), we found that different sectors of youth thought and responded differently with regards to particular policies and urban-form changes. Importantly, the youth we spoke with were not homogenous; they came from different socioeconomic backgrounds, varied in age, gender, and sexual orientation, had a variety of occupations, and ranged from single to young parents. Due to such factors (and others we probably missed), their modification of or resistance to state- or private-led urban change took different shapes and forms. For example, some youth tended to make space-use choices based on their specific sub-culture, such as skateboarders who actively converted public and pseudo-public spaces into sites for their leisure, while parents utilised malls as an air-conditioned space for their children to play (Boudreau et al. 2015; Pyyry & Tani 2015).

45Focusing on socioeconomic background, we noted that a cluster of low socio-economic class respondents supported the bus rapid transit system out of necessity, needing to use it due to a lack of financial resources to purchase a motorbike. Yet, many of these same individuals were critical of and resisted the implementation of the metro due to its links to China, sharing this opinion with the vast majority of all youth respondents. The financial implications of the future motorbike ban weighed heavily on the minds of lower-class youth. As Huy, an 18-year-old who relies on his electric bicycle to get around noted bluntly “not all people have hundreds of millions of đồng to buy cars to replace their motorbike” (July 21, 2017). In comparison, sentiments of upward mobility were evident within middle-class youth, with Thanh, a 24-year-old stating, “I don’t care [about the motorbike ban], in 10 years I’ll buy a car” (July 24, 2017). Upper-class youth were also less concerned about whether the motorbike ban would affect them.

46When asked if they aspired to live in one of the new gated communities and large-scale apartment blocks, upper-class youth did not mention finances as impacting their ability to do so whereas their lower- and middle-class counterparts were quick to point to this barrier. Among upper-class youth, we also found less concern regarding lower-class workers in the city, such as street vendors, perhaps because upper-class youth live more sheltered from such day-to-day livelihood realities. They also seldom reflected upon the growing lack of affordable housing in the city. The greater financial security of upper-class youth thus appeared to result in less consideration of specific unsustainable aspects of Hanoi’s growth, compared to lower and middle-class youth. Nonetheless, across all classes we found a concern for the natural environment and the city’s cultural heritage, a distaste for Chinese involvement in the future planning of the city, and frustration at a lack of information of forthcoming city plans.

47In sum, in a politically socialist state setting where top-down change is planned, processed, and deployed with little public consultation or information, we found Hanoi youth respondents fairly well aware that the government’s budget was not equipped for the urban overhaul that Hanoi is currently undergoing. Hence, they perceived recent urban changes as significantly shaped by a combination of both state control and foreign capital, a mix that they argued allowed little consideration of the needs and desires of urban residents. Youth remained overwhelmingly frustrated by the lack of specific information that they could gain and distrusted state sources regarding the benefits of current or future plans. Nonetheless, these youth were not passive bystanders and actively shaped the urban environment to fit their own needs in a number of resourceful and mindful ways. Similar to the “self-organising” and “people-led urbanism” history of Hanoi, youth in Hanoi were constantly re-purposing the built environment to fit their immediate needs (Geertman 2007: 303; McGee 2009: 232).

48On an aggregate scale, these acts of everyday politics might be able to serve as a means to elicit change in the development trajectory of this capital city, if enlightened state planners and consultants were to tune into the diverse ways that youth adapt, modify, and evade state expectations of public space use (perhaps through analyses like this). Yet those in positions of relative power would have to be mindful of why youth are making these transgressions, beyond just assuming these are acts of youth “resisting power”. Concurrently, the degree to which youth in Hanoi will be able to continue to modify or resist state norms, as they fashion different visions of their city in their daily actions, remains an important and intriguing question.

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Notes

1 The Master Plan was designed by a group composed of: New York Architect Firm, Perkins Eastman, and two Korean firms Posco E&C and Jina Architects, along with the Vietnamese Institute of Architecture, Urban and Rural Planning, and the Hanoi Urban Planning Institute (Lamster 2011).

2 While we follow the census definition of youth, it should be noted that the Vietnam Youth Law defines the official period of youth (thạnh niên) as spanning 16 to 30 (Ministry of Home Affairs of Viet Nam 2012), while among the general population the period of youth is often seen as ending only when one has children of one’s own, due in part to Confucian ideology (Valentin 2007).

3 Debate continues regarding the usefulness of defining social class in both post-socialist and Asian contexts (Zhang 2010) including concerns over the use of so called “objective factors”, the lack of focus on the ways that class belonging is also gendered and rooted in one’s homeland, and other elements (Bélanger et al. 2012). We nonetheless draw on Drummond’s (2012) categorisation as a useful starting point while remaining wary of overly focusing on social class in our analysis.

4 All names are pseudonyms that correspond with the interviewee’s sex.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. One of Hanoi’s mega-malls
Légende One of Hanoi’s growing number of mega-malls with the metro-line under construction and daily motorbike traffic.
Crédits © Sarah Turner 2014.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/civilisations/docannexe/image/5778/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 372k
Titre Figure 2. Young parents with their children playing in an upscale shopping mall
Crédits © Sarah Turner 2019.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/civilisations/docannexe/image/5778/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 242k
Titre Figure 3. Drivers illegally taking the designated BRT lane
Crédits © Sarah Turner 2019.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/civilisations/docannexe/image/5778/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 273k
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Madeleine Hykes et Sarah Turner, « Youth negotiations: Navigating public space access and urban planning transformations in Hanoi, Vietnam »Civilisations, 69 | 2020, 149-170.

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Madeleine Hykes et Sarah Turner, « Youth negotiations: Navigating public space access and urban planning transformations in Hanoi, Vietnam »Civilisations [En ligne], 69 | 2020, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2024, consulté le 20 mai 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/civilisations/5778 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/civilisations.5778

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Auteurs

Madeleine Hykes

Madeleine Hykes is a recent graduate from the Honours Geography (Urban Studies) program at McGill University, Canada. She has completed fieldwork in Hanoi, Vietnam as a student researcher and then as a research assistant since 2017. Her research interests include urban accessibility, civic design, and the politics of large-scale transportation projects. She is currently an AmeriCorps VISTA and the Love Your Block program coordinator in Hartford, Connecticut, USA [Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke St. West, Montréal, QC, H3A 0B9 Canada | mgreenehykes[at]gmail.com]

Sarah Turner

Sarah Turner is professor of geography at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She has completed research in urban and rural Vietnam since 1999, and before that in Malaysia and Indonesia. Her urban research focuses on how informal economy workers maintain livelihoods, often while having to resist state policies that curtail their options. She has co-authored (with Bonnin & Michaud) Frontier Livelihoods: Hmong in the Sino-Vietnamese Borderlands (2015). [Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke St. West, Montréal, QC, H3A 0B9 Canada | sarah.turner[at]mcgill.ca]

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