A planner reflects on a half a century of urban change from post-war reconstruction to headlong development
Since even before the turn of the 21st Century, Southeast Asia has shaken the world with its rapid urban development. Hồ Chí Minh City is often cited as one of the prime examples of this transformation projected to become a global megacity by 2035. When you consider Vietnam’s very recent history of devastating war, it is an extraordinary feat.
30 April 2025 marked half a century since the end of the Second Indo-China War (often referred to from a US perspective as the Vietnam War). While media outlets across Vietnam have rushed to report on the lavish celebrations of 50 years national reunification taking place across the country, in an article for VN Express journalists Lê Tuyết and Quang Tuệ have decided rather to reflect on the changes in Saigon’s urban structure in a remarkable exposition charting Saigon’s reconstruction and then rapid expansion after the war.
“Many people criticize the development of Hồ Chí Minh City by comparing it with countries like Singapore, but they forget the starting point and circumstances that this city was founded upon,” says Mr. Võ Kim Cương, the former chief Architect of Hồ Chí Minh City. Mr. Võ joined the Department of Construction in 1989. After the war ended in 1975, he points out the city still faced numerous challenges, from a lack of capital to the US embargo, lasting until 1994. The nation’s leaders had enough to worry about with keeping the masses from starving than thinking through urban reconstruction. Survival was key – even apartments in the centre would be surrounded by chicken and livestock, as the people fought to stay alive. In the first 5 years after the war, the city had no significant construction projects, no long-term strategy, but only what Mr. Võ describes as “partial firefighting.”
Formerly known as Saigon, the city had earned a reputation during the colonial era for being the most developed in Indochina, known to the world as the “Pearl of the Far East”. However, when Mr. Võ moved to Saigon from Hanoi in the 80s, he realised this really only applied to the wealthiest Districts: 1, 3, and 10. Outside of the centre, along the canals of Thị Nghè, Tàu Hủ, and Lò Gốm, towards the urban districts Bình Thạnh, Tân Bình, and Phú Nhuận, there were incredibly deprived areas, what the old government described as “slums”. After the war, the city’s borders were redrawn, merging the old colonially demarcated Saigon with the much poorer outlying district of Gia Định and the small city of Chợ Lớn, established by the Chinese-speaking minority Hoa community. It was this massively expanded urban and semi-urban area that was given the name Hồ Chí Minh City in 1976, commonly referred to as HCMC.
The merging of different localities which had different governance structures and different historic levels of investment presented new challenges. The Saigon Capital was classified as a “first-class city” by the French, and had benefited from systematic urban planning and symbolic constructions such as the Independence Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Opera House. On the other end of the spectrum was Gia Định, a large semi-rural area with a network of canals that had become a shelter for those fleeing wartime violence.
“At that time, Saigon was already zoned according to urban planning and standards, while many other places developed spontaneously with many distortions,” Mr. Võ says. The result was a radical asymmetry. Mr. Võ describes the new city as being “deformed”. From a planning perspective, “HCMC at that time was like a slice of a boiled egg. The yolk in the middle was District 1 and 3, surrounded by the white with many slums and poor slums.”
Architect Khương Văn Mười, former Vice Chairman of Vietnam’s Association of Architects, notes that while many parts of the country were heavily devastated by war, Saigon was almost intact: “This safety had attracted people from everywhere to avoid military service, avoid bombs, and seek business opportunities.” A 1972 report by USAID shows that Saigon’s population quadrupled from just over 1 million in 1945, to nearly 3.5 million in 1975. But during this period, immigrants could not enter the inner city. New houses were self-constructed without proper regulation or planning, forming slums along the canals, paddyfields and suburbs of Gia Định.
“The urban imbalance has haunted the city for the past 50 years, when it has to simultaneously build, repair, and renovate,” says Mr. Võ: “it has become a huge challenge in the development process.” He uses the comparison of building a house on an empty lot versus an old piece of land, it’s always easier to build something when starting new.
There is a gulf between the state’s ambition to build anew and the existing urban reality. “Looking back, I think the plan at that time was probably a bit idealistic, because it was almost like imagining drawing the city on empty land, while the reality of Hồ Chí Minh City is very complicated. Later, I realized that some of the plan was not feasible,” he says. The biggest limitation of this plan was the lack of resources. “There are a lot of drawings, but no one knew how much money was in the pocket. The plan was just slogans without a specific implementation plan,” he commented. The material conditions would only improve after the country opened up in 1995, but then major construction was strongly influenced by the pull from the private sector.
Despite all these challenges, urban reconstruction has had its fair share of successes, such as the revitalisation of the city’s most polluted canal Nhiêu Lộc – Thị Nghè, into a clean river running through the heart of the city. Nonetheless, reflecting on decades of hard work, Mr. Võ looks back on reconstruction with some regret. “There are places where if the planning was well implemented, the urban appearance and people’s lives would be much better,” he says.
Original article (“Cuộc Tái Thiết Đô Thị Sái Gón Sau Chiến Tranh” by Lê Tuyết and Quang Tuệ) was written in Vietnamese and published in VnExpress on 22 April 2025. It’s available here.
VnExpress is a Vietnamese online newspaper, run by FPT Group. It was the first newspaper in Vietnam that was not produced in paper format. It is one of the most popular websites in Vietnam.
Summary by TMH.
