Urbanization, migration, and Vietnam's spatial structure.

Abstract

In North Vietnam during the war years from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, cities were evacuated to minimize damage from bombing. As such, the urbanization process was checked. In the South, however, urban areas grew rapidly as people fled the fighting in the villages. Reunification of the country led to an outflow of residents from the largest southern cities back to the North or into new economic zones. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, Vietnam's total urban population remained static before beginning to increase slowly during the latter half of the 1980s. The rate of urbanization accelerated in the first half of the 1990s, although that process is not reflected in the available statistics. During 1979-89, the smaller cities grew faster than the larger ones, while most interprovincial migration occurred from North to South. Unemployment is a major problem in Vietnam's growing cities. The country's economic reforms require a more fluid labor market with fewer restrictions upon labor mobility. These needs are gradually undermining the strategy designed to contain urbanization, forcing planners to rethink urban development. The author discusses developing Vietnam's three main urban development corridors.