Context: Having read Dahiya (2012) and Truitt (2008), citations below, I was asked to comment on urbanization issues I am most intrigued by, especially within Ho Chi Minh City.
Though I am far from an expert on issues of urban planning, my time at Lewis & Clark gave me a few opportunities to really dig into the notion of cities. The combination of Dahiyas “Cites in Asia, 2012” and Truitt’s “On the Back of a Motorbike” offer an excellent contrast not only in focus, but in the data and frameworks they choose when assessing urban issues. That multiple disciplines can contribute to perspectives on urban development is no secret within academia. Even so, finding ways to meaningfully integrate those perspectives in such a way that they lend a near-essential support to each other, rather than sit as separate-but-equal views, can be challenging.
It is exactly that effort at integrating ideas and processes across scales that most intrigues me, and while this is more of a “perspective” than a “problem” I think the lines between the two are thin enough to merit exploration. In simple terms, I think the question “how are we going to look at this city?” is one of the more interesting ones you can ask in urbanization. Within HCMC, for example, you can ask this question – in some form – of nearly anyone on the street. What does the city mean to its citizens, outsiders, tourists, or others? What does it do for them? How do people interpret and understand the city, if at all? It is certainly no guarantee that anyone thinks about things in that way, though in my experience you can find people who do in all walks of life.
Truitt does this rather successfully within the context of the motorbike particularly, narrating a history of the vehicle as an actor influencing and influenced by the perspectives of users and non-users alike in Vietnam. She also scales effectively, with insights ranging from the role of international markets and trade (i.e. the perceived differences between locally produced, Chinese, or Japanese motorbikes) while still exploring the meaning a motorbike has for a variety of individual users. Of course, she does so specific to the motorbike rather than the city as a whole, but the concept is there: even concrete physical objects can convey meaning.
Where this scholarly approach hits the ground as a practical and (somewhat) concrete problem is when you have actors responsible for urban management whose perspective influences the way they make decisions, structure their lives, or direct the energy of their work.
Dahiya’s data-driven report sets us up well for this kind of exploration, offering an example of generalized trends and guiding the reader to recognize those datapoints as critical to understanding East Asian cities. But I wonder what your average user and denizen of HCMC would contribute, change, or add. Is their belief about what a city is or how problems are working contributing to the way they engage the urban setting? Would they see the same trends? How do they depict the city through their language, statements of value, or problem solving approach? In short, would the perceived meaning and narratives generated match the quantitative data?
Obviously talking to people will be the most critical step towards gaining some understanding. But I suspect even wandering the city will offer me the means to explore these notions more fully. I intend to keep an eye out for anything that seems to make statements about urbanization, either through marketing depictions, government notices, billboards, or otherwise. Given that HCMC is a major urban hub in a rapidly growing economy, I am expecting to see mostly enthusiastic interpretations of the potential of urban areas, advertisements rooted in taking advantage of opportunity, and a general positive atmosphere of urban development and growth. I suspect many of the problems of growth will be seen as necessary evils (that was the sense I got regarding traffic, for example, from Truitt’s piece). I will be curious to see if I can uncover any broader understanding of long-term problems being built into the economic or social structure of the city, or efforts to address those as they stand. I imagine my wildly untrained eyes will not pick up on much of this during my first few outings, but we shall see.
Dahiya, Bharat. 2012. “Cities in Asia, 2012: Demographics, Economics, Poverty, Environment and Governance.” Cities 29: S44–S61.
Truitt, Allison. 2008. “On the Back of a Motorbike: Middle-Class Mobility in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.” American Ethnologist 35(1): 3–19.