GLOBALIZING THE CITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: UTOPIA ON THE URBAN EDGE - THE CASE OF PHU MY HUNG, SAIGON

The accelerated urban transition now taking place in Southeast Asia focuses on a handful of mega-urban regions that are absorbing hundreds of thousands of people into their expanding urban sphere every year. The certainty of the continued rapid geographical expansion of urban landscapes into rural hinterlands is allowing for a particular global process that magnifies what is also happening in other parts of the world: the creation by international land developers of gigantic new towns presented as exclusive utopia for an emerging urban upper middle class. With vast areas of rural land soon to be absorbed into expanding metropolitan regions, these developers have what appears to be a clean slate for the construction of private new towns. Among the most ambitious is Saigon South covering 3,300 hectares of land and slated to be the home of one million people. Located just across the Doi Canal and Ben Luc River from central Saigon, this development scheme is totally planned with, no mechanism for community planning, no lower classes or slums. Although portrayed as a great advance for the people of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, Saigon) metropolis, what and where its public spaces and civic life are questions without ready answers.

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