Moving to the city: Patterns of Migration and Land Use/Cover Change
- How do patterns of migration in Vietnam affect land /use cover?
- What are the patterns of migration in Vietnam?
- What motivates people to migrate to Ho Chi Minh City?
- How have land use/cover patterns changed in the Saigon River Watershed?
Background
As Eric F. Lambin defines land use transition as a non-linear phenomena that is spurred by “negative socio-ecological feedbacks that arise from a depletion of key resources or from socio-economic change and innovation that take place rather independently from the ecological system”(2009). Lambin looks at the relationship between these socio-economic changes and land use change specifically for forestry in Vietnam (2009). Vietnam is rapidly growing country, and like many developing and transitioning economies, the effects of urbanization are clearly evident. Ho Chi Minh City, in the south of Vietnam in the Mekong Delta, is the economic center of Vietnam. The urban population is growing at an alarming rate, while the official urban growth rate is 3.6 percent per year, including unofficial migrant and urban sprawl; the growth rate is closer to 5 percent per year (Dapice 2010). The city boundaries have expanded to accommodate the influx of rural migrants.The rapid rural to urban migration can relieve pressure on rural land and also change how that land is used. Cu Chi Loi sees this patterns of migration as a “rebalancing process to generate momentum for a new stage of development” (2005). So while intensive land use may decrease in regions of out-migration, it may increase where there is need for a greater labor force.
For my research I will focus on the Saigon River Watershed because it encompasses Ho Chi Minh City, low lying wetlands, rice farming and crop land, as well as highland vegetation and agriculture. I am also interested in this area because of it’s high rural to urban immigration rate and because of my personal experiences in Ho Chi Minh City. Dzung Nguyen gives a good picture of how the land cover has changed although most of his report specifically looks at hydrologic changes. In his maps, the changes from 1990 to 2010 are stark. The urban boundary of Ho Chi Minh city increases significantly and there also is a visible decrease is barren land (2013). I will need to find more literature to give me a better idea of what this region is like and what changes have occurred.
Methods
For this project I would like to use my personal connections in Ho Chi Minh City to learn more about why people choose to move to the city and where they came from. I will contact people I know to either tell me their narratives of transition and migration or translate other people’s stories. I will ask specifically where they moved from and why they moved, but the interviews would be free form so other topics could arise. They also could take place over multiple sessions. I would like to use these narratives to frame and add depth to my quantitative research.
In addition to primary literature and interviews, I will use landSAT imagery and ArcGIS to address my research question. I will obtain landSAT imagery of the Saigon River watershed from many different years. I will classify it into different land types and address how each land type changed over the period of time I have chosen. I will specifically look at how the urban boundary changes and what kind of land is being displaced. I have also found population density data by province that I can use in conjunction with the landSAT imagery to see if there are any correlations between population fluctuations and land cover change.
Resources
Cu, Loi Chi. 2005. “Rural to Urban Migration in Vietnam.” http://www.ide-jetro.jp/English/Publish/Download/Asedp/pdf/071_7.pdf.
Dapice, David ,Jose A. Gomez-Ibanez, Nguyen Xuan Thanh. 2010. “Ho Chi Minh City:
The Challenges of Growth.” Harvard Policy Dialogue Papers. “Series on Vietnam’s WTO Accession and International Competitiveness Research”
Lambin, Eric F., and Patrick Meyfroidt. 2010. “Land Use Transitions: Socio-Ecological Feedback versus Socio-Economic Change.” Land Use Policy, Forest transitions Wind power planning, landscapes and publics, 27 (2): 108–18. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.09.003.
Nguyen Dzung Do. 2013. “Urban form evolution in Saigon River Basin & impacts on hydrologic performance.” CPG Consultants. 49th ISOCARP Congress 2013.