Metropolisation, migrations and urban civilisation: the example of Hanoi

With 38% of its population living in cities, Vietnam is in the process of completing its urban transition. The arrival of populations from the countryside coupled with a process of spatial sprawl is part of the urban catching up that the country has been doing since the liberalization of its economy at the end of the 1980s. Poles of concentration of value and population are rapidly being formed: the metropolises. The Vietnamese metropolises, starting with the capital city-province of Hanoi, are the vehicle and modus operandi of the country's transition to a market economy, and they crystallize a number of social tensions linked in particular to the entrenchment, or even the clash, of rural and urban cultures. The purpose of this article is to see how, in the peri-urban area of Hanoi, an observation post for the advance of the city over the countryside, the “urban civilization” program is being called upon by the authorities to promote urban modernization based on social harmony and a certain vision of urban sociality.