Day Two: Tuesday

Tuesday morning we had a guest lecture at UEF. Du Quoc Tan, the Chair of the Department of Urban Management Research at Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies (HIDS) came to talk to us about urban planning in the city of Saigon. Even though we had only spent a day in Vietnam, we already found that there was a lot about the city we did not understand because it was so different from an American city. We learned that the city had been built by the French, and that they had never estimated the population to be so large, which is why the streets were often so congested with motorbikes. Also, the country had no emission laws, which led to the masks worn by a large portion of the population who walked the streets, and that the Vietnamese didn't want to appear dark, so they wore long sleeves and pants when they were outside during the day, even though that is when it is the hottest.

We had lunch at the school's Can tin again and then went to Phu My Hung for the afternoon. It was a very long trip, so we could tell that we were going far from the center of the city. I had no idea what to except from this developmental company, but assumed that it would be similar to a housing company in America, possibly similar to my interactions when I was younger with Toll Brothers, since we built our house in a new development.

We saw some of their architectural plans, and I was shocked to discover that Phu My Hung was essentially building what I considered a city within the city. In the area known as South Saigon they had cleared wetlands and were building new residential areas to attract people away from the overcrowded city. Since we had learned about the overcrowding and its consequences earlier in the morning, I understood the necessity of minimizing the congestion. I had never really seen a project of this type in the US, so i thought it was especially interesting.
Not only were they building a "suburb", they had ensured that within the community, everything you would need was within walking distance. I saw a correlation between this process and my archeology class, because ancient societies have also been found to get all of their resources within a certain distance from their homes. Though it was supposed to be an area to accept spillover from the city, I felt that the affluent people who moved into South Saigon would really have no reason to leave the area and to go back into the congested city.