Modern Views, Unblocked: Looking into the Distance in Phú Mỹ Hưng, a Vietnamese New Urban Zone

Abstract

When describing Phu Mỹ Hưng, an upscale master-planned residential and commercial development located on the peri-urban fringe of Ho Chi Minh City, residents typically emphasize the light, the air, and the openness. They often comment on how modern it is and describe how it offers a new way of seeing the urban landscape—it offers a “modern view.” The view residents describe is modern because it is unblocked, has depth of field, and allows people to see beyond the dense webs of social relations and concrete walls that circumscribe views elsewhere in the city. This modern view offers people a generalized sense of “release” or of becoming unblocked. In this article, I describe the ways in which residents and visitors engage with, discuss, and even write poetry about open spaces, parks, wide boulevards, and riverfront promenades in Phu Mỹ Hưng. In the process, I show that the modern view they describe is not only a way of looking at landscapes, but also expresses urban social aspirations, which can carry subtle, yet often powerful, political connotations.