DSpace at VNU: Small mepropolises? Case studiesof Cao Bang and Vinh

SMALL MEPROPOLISES? CASE STUDIES OF CAO BANG AND VINH T im K a ise r, H a n n a h von B io h , R u d ig e r K o r f f ' Introduction Although the largest percentage of the urban population resides in small and intermediate cities, these are seldom the focus of urban studies >401 the least the look at coining urban disasters through the rise of mega-cities, climatc change etc favoured a perspective centered on large cities, and much less on the provincial cities and district towns In rural studies these cities are as well widely ignored Even though in many cases the small district towns go through rapid processes of change, and emerge as centers structuring and articulating the rural surroundings, rural studies tend to maintain their focus on villages We won't bemoan this neglect here, but draw attention to a quite contradictory process, namely thal big cities and metropolis develop features of communities usually associated with rural life, while within the district town urbanism in its classic sense is evolving Studies of global cities and metropolis note that within these settlements distinct, often globally connected communities emerge Appadurai for example shows how closely connected migrant communities tend to be Similarly, studies on gated communities indicate the ghettoization of certain urban classes Looking at the peripheral regions of mcga-cities, McGee notes a situation he refers to as "Kotadesa" or urban - rural These regions show many features of villages rather than of parts of a metropolis Several studies of slums within the metropolis indicate the high degree of social cohesion In Indonesia one still speaks of Kampung or village in the big city For Wirth in his classic study "Urbanism as a way of life", heterogeneity of the city allowed a degree of anonymity and shifting of roles depending on the social context In his studies of Civitas and more so in "The fall of public man", R Sennet criticizes the attempts to establish communities of intimacy within the citics Processes of globalization favor such a growth of intimacy and ghettoization of * Professor Southeast Asian Studies )], University o f Passau, Germany 90 SM ALL ME PROPOLISES? ^ A S E S T U D IE S O F C A O B A N G A N D V IN H cosmopolitan" people ]hc RoBo {Bohemian Bourgeois) have their own condominiums, they gn to bouliqucs and coffcc-shops where they are sure to find other BoBo ctc A s result the city is, in terms of everyday life of its inhabitants, increasingly fragmented into communities The consequcnce is not dissolution of the city, hut rather the transformation especially of the big and global citics into collections of villages, quite similar to vvhai we find in remote rural areas inhabited by different ethnic minorities Just as in northern Thailand we have the village of ihe Akha, close to the Lisu village and [he villages of the Shan and Karen with some villages of Umong and Laliu in between, it seems (hat we have in the global cities [he village of the migrant maids close to the BoBo village and the gated village of the rich etc One might argue that the differences between the villages in the uplands o f the Mekong River and the global cities are mainly architectural The first living in wooden huts, while the others life in duplex houses, high-rises etc In contrast, provincial and district towns are too small to allow for the rise of distinct communities The inhabitants have to communicate with each other and integrate the different groups as neighbors into their everyday life Thereby the heterogeneity of communication and of relations to people of diverse life styles becomes a main feature In other words, in the small cities the weak ties gain in rclcvance As Granovetter notes in "The strength of weak ties", such structures allow the rapid spread of innovations among different groups and cultures As a consequcncc, the small towns became ever more urban in the sense of urbanism while the metropolis is ruralising In the following contents we would like to present some preliminary findings irom research we have been conducling in intermediate towns in Vietnam during the past few years In the large and ever growing body of literature on urbanization in Vietnam, very few studies look beyond the country's largest cities Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are often taken to represent the whole breadlh of urban life In fact, they are only two of 731 settlements (as of 2009) classified as urban by the Government of Vietnam Approximately 68 percent of Vietnam's urban population lives in citics with less than 800,000 inhabitants Studying the dynamics of and in these smaller settlements is thus crucial for understanding the factors which determine everyday life in a large part of the country Cao Bang Cao Rang lies far from Hanoi 275 km at the National Highway in the mountainous Northeast of Vietnam The settlement is the provincial capita] of the rural province Cao Bang bordering to China As of 2007, the town counted 55.000 inhabitants Although still a small town by all slandards, the town housed ]] 591 VIỆT NẤM HỌC - KỶ YÊl) HỘI T H Ả O QUỐC TẾ LẢN T H Ứ T percent of the province's population and by far the highest population density of the province (988 inhabitants/ km3 as oppose to an average 76 inhabitants/ km2 in the other districts) What also sets Cao Bang apart from the rest of the province is the composition of the town’s population The last census of Cao Bang which included the ethnic composition of the population (1999) stated that the largest ethnic groups in the town were the Tay (47 percent), Followed by the Kinh (32 percent) and the Nung (20 percent) In the past years the percentage of Kinh in Cao Bang certainly has increased further In contrast, a later census at province-level (2005) still only counted percent Kinh overall in the province Cao Bang town has long been integrated in the superregional flow of people and resources After being occupied by the French in 1886, Cao Bang became seat of the highest county administration, and developed into a hub lor regional and cross-bordcr trade with China via Longzhou (Quangxi) upstream of the Bang Giang River At the turn of the 20th century, Cao Bang was a destination for not only the regional ethnic groups, but also for Kinh traders from the Red River Delta, Chinese traders and soldiers as well as for French bureaucrats and soldiers Cao Bang town is located in a peninsular valley formed by the confluence of the Bang Giang and Ilien rivers The city centre has since earliest times been located on the semi-island formed by this confluence The other nine administrative units of Cao Bang are grouped around this semi-island On the semi-island itself, the streets are laid out in North-South/ East-West alignment with the town’s small park as their centre The urban architecture further demarcates this centre, as it is surrounded by the town’s largest and most important government buildings: The provincial people’s committee, the culture hall, the post office, and the community ccntre The town’s inhabitants organize their everyday life around this centre It is in close proximity to the central market, a popular site for public events and provides recreational activities in the evening Cafes surrounding the park arc visited by people of all strata As the spatial organization of the town indicates, Cao Bang is not only an administrative entity hut is also a social entity in which the population shares certain modes of organisation In this sense, Cao Bang as spatial entity is then the expression and result of the social interaction of its inhabitants The features of social space indicate the level of local cohesion and conformity regarding everyday practices i.e questions of style, location, time, actors, procedures etc In this way, the town as social space is a vehicle which facilitates communication and cooperation in the sense that il provides the town's inhabitants with a common understanding regarding the structure of everyday life and the status role, position 592 SM ALI M E P R O P O L IS E S C A S F S T U D IE S O F C A O R A N G A N D V IN H of c.icii actor within it As such, the town's inhabitants fonri a network of everyday life of sorts 1his is evident, for example, in the modes of organization of the local entrepreneurs Besides slate employment, small and medium enterprises (both formal and informal) arc the mosl important source of income in Can Rang The SM I scclor is also an important pull-Tactor for migrants Besides regular CO Hi:nutcrs and migrants from the surrounding rural districts, Cao Rang attracts a considerable number of migrants from other provinces Many of these migrants come from rural regions in the lowlands, ranging from the Red River Delta 200 km awav lo the Mekong Delta more than 1000 km away Maintaining contacts outside the settlement is an essential livelihood sưategy fotr both migrants and long-term residents employed in the local SM E sector A high mobility and flexibility secures access to resources not readily available in (heir placs of rcsidcnce, Cao Bang A large number of entrepreneurs leave Cao Rang at leas once a week in order to slock up on goods in the city, to supervise business activities in the countryside, to meet business partners, gather information or attend a training course Also, a surprising number of people own a second house in Hanoi to fecilitatc business trips or to provide accommodation for offspring studying in the city - although the city is almost eight hours drive away from their place of residence The formation of informal networks within town, too, can be seen as a way to cope with the specific challenges entrepreneurs face in Coo Hang By exchanging inffo*mation, lending each other equipment or organizing supply chains together the entrepreneurs secure access to resources which are hard to come by in Cao Dang Scarcity of resources, spatial proximity and small population size facilitate the interaction and co-opcration among local entrepreneurs The population of Cao Ban? in general and the number of local entrepreneurs in particular are so small that all ncmbers arc forced to interact with cach other on a daily basis Immigrants thus integrate themselves rapidly, enter local networks and to a ccrtain extent also share the lew knowledge or ideas they bring into the town Knowledge can hereby be lram>ibrmcd from an individual inlo a collective resource A nicc example is Bùi Văn Đậu from Thai Binh Province, lie trained as a pa;st~y cook and worked in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City before moving to Cao Bairy, During the time of his arrival in Cao Bang, pastries were sought-aflcr by locas and brought up from the lowlands as spccial treats for friends Since then, a range of bakeries have been established in Cao Hang as other residents study the bUisiicss and pick up the know-how 593 VIỆT NAM HỌC - KỶ YẾU HỘI T H Ả O QUỐ C TẾ LẲN T H Ứ T In sum each newly arriving or returning individual contributes to minute changes in the town’s economic landscape and social structure Thus changes within the local population spark innovation and provide impulses for change, which the town is unable to generate from within but quick to pick up when given an impulse Vinh Vinh in Vietnam’s Nghe An Province is the provincial capita! and the regional centre With its inhabitants numbering 305.000, it is the country’s 10lh largest city and among the second tier urban centres The city is thus a city "in-between", neither one of the large urban agglomerations like Ho-Chi-Minh City or Hanoi, nor among the small cities like Cao Bang The city’s identity as a centre of anti-colonial and revolutionary struggle as well as Ho Chi Minh’s homeland has an integrative effect on its inhabitants Despite above average economic growth and a population growth of nearly one third from 2005 to 2010, phenomena of rapid urbanization and differentiation are still in their early stages However, a retreat into privacy and the formation of distinct local communities is showing Two major causes can be indentified: international cooperation in the production of urban space on one hand and the city’s authority’s aspirations for {he development of a large "modem and civilized" city on ihe other After the city had been nearly totally destroyed by the U.S bombing raids, it was reconstructed with the help of the German Democratic Republic in the 1970s This resulted in the creation of the Quang Trung housing estate, consisting of 22 apartment blocks in the "socialist" style W hile the goal was to build a socialist city as a symbol of a bright future, economic difficulties increasingly detached the project from local realities In the end, large amounts of steel, concrete and other building materials had to be imported, as reliance on local and national resources was impossible Not only was the project reliant on the application of international resources, skills and knowledge Living conditions in the apartments differed significantly from the lifestyles people were used to, a fact that would later on contribute much to the fast deterioration of the building’s quality and surroundings While the application of the walk-up multi-story apartment building slyle was planned to contribute up to 80% of the city’s housing stock in the 1970s and 80s, the mode] was not replicated and Quang Trung apartment blocks stand in stark contrast to the prevalent way of building in the city With economic growth accelerating in the 1990s and especially in the last in years differences in income and consumption possibilities bccome more pronounced At the same time, strategies for access to resources also diversify 594 S M A L L ME P R O P O L IS E S C A S E S T U D IE S O F C A O B A N G A N D V IN H Consider Ihc case of the Cua Nam ward upgrading project: With the help of two international NGOs and the Association of (Jties of Vietnam, the inhabitants of Hull Nghi housing area were able to upgrade iheir houses in a participatory and ' community strengthening" way Tools employed were saving groups, community architccts and self-help In the end, the projcct was able lo convince the provincial authorities to adjust building regulations, so no members of the neighbourhood had to move away To achieve this, Ihe inhabitants had to rely on overseas funds (partly donated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), experts from Thailand and Cambodia as well as the rational organisation Association of Cities of Vietnam Despite the project's explicit aim to connccl the urban poor and their savings groups, Ihc inhabitants did draw much more on resources and networks outside their city Furthermore, decisions on the application of this mode] arc firmly in the hands of the administrative apparatus and the Women’s Union The inhabitants of Huu Nghi are thus not encouraged lo participate in city wide networks At Ihe same lime, with growing numbers of nouveau rich and middle-class consumers, international and national corporations start to eye the market in Vinh City This is most visibly expressed in the presence of car-showrooms, shopping centres and high-rise apartment buildings Among the first to arrive were French Casino group and German Metro group These showcases of consumer culture not only provide shopping opportunities but also stages for new choices in lifestyle and consumption They attract customers from as far away as Laos, while at die same time many of the people living next door only participate as non-buying spectators This creation of "internationalised" economic centres follows the city administration’s strategy to generate tax-incomc and job-opportunities by attracting (where possible international) investment, while at the same time setting these areas spatially apart from administrative zones where the revolutionary role of the city as Ho Chi Minh’s homeland is celebrated Also, plans for further enlarging the administrative boundaries of the city hy incorporating surrounding villages and (owns will probably contribute to the ’'ruralisalion" of the city Conclusion The size of a city matters as a variable for social relations A small city like Cao Bang is too large to be a community but loo small to be an assemblage of distinct communities In Vinh, a much larger city, where heterogeneity is more pronounccd, we also notice processes of differentiation accompanied by communal ties and forms of exclusion With regards lo urbanism wc have thus to distinguish between heterogeneity as coexisting, more or less separated communities within a given space of a city, and heterogeneity as experienced in everyday life 595 ... in Cao Dang Scarcity of resources, spatial proximity and small population size facilitate the interaction and co-opcration among local entrepreneurs The population of Cao Ban? in general and. .. public events and provides recreational activities in the evening Cafes surrounding the park arc visited by people of all strata As the spatial organization of the town indicates, Cao Bang is not... which facilitates communication and cooperation in the sense that il provides the town's inhabitants with a common understanding regarding the structure of everyday life and the status role, position