Neoliberal Urbanism Meets Socialist Modernism: Vietnam’s Post-Reform Housing Policies and the New Urban Zones of Hanoi

Neoliberalism has, arguably, demonstrated its power in describing the changing course of governing ideology and strategies in the United States and Britain. Yet, as the concept proliferates across a variety of countries with diverse social and political systems and as scholars resort to it to offer a universalizing conception of the changes in such countries, it appears that the concept has been overstretched beyond its analytic utility. This is the case with Vietnam. Since the introduction of the economic reform, Doi Moi, in 1986, Vietnam has been transitioning from a socialist system to a market economy with the state retreating and the market (or the third sector), at least in theory, advancing into almost every aspect of the social and economic arenas.
In fact, the concept of neoliberalism, despite being generally defined as ‘a politically guided intensification of market rule and commodification’ (Brenner et al, 2009, p. 184) as well as being perceived as ‘[a] global proliferation of a particular logic of late capitalism’ (Schwenkel and Leshkowich, 2012, p.380), has become more inconsistent, imprecise and attracted more contestation when expanded to discuss phenomenon in other socio-political contexts (Brenner et al, 2009). In this respect, as several authors observed, Vietnam could hardly be considered a showcase for neoliberalism (Masina, 2012, p.204; Gainsborough, 2010) and it is problematic to connect Vietnam’s transition to a market economy with unequivocal evidence of the triumph of neoliberalism in Vietnam.
It is the goal of this paper, in echoing the general theme of this book, to clarify the specificities of neoliberalism in Asian cities in general and the transitional economy of Vietnam in particular. This chapter will focus on the housing policy in Vietnam, and new urban zones (Khu do thi moi in Vietnamese, henceforth KDTM) in Hanoi as a case study. Not only is housing one of the policy areas that has undergone the most comprehensive reform towards market domination, but it is also a sector that has witnessed the deepest engagement of international agencies in policy reform and the involvement of international capital. Hanoi is also the ‘political’ city in Vietnam in which the manifestation of state policy is more apparent. Thus, it is able to offer rich empirical data for critically examining the impact of the neoliberal logic on policy development in Vietnam.