Urban Green Areas – their functions under a changing lifestyle of ...

local governance’ becomes “now a major subtheme within the overall context of
democratic development” (BLAIR 2012: 21).
However, there is still a distance between Vietnam and western societies in terms using
social media to demand public comment.
But progress will be very fast. The more people learn about and use the new civil rights the
more fields of public interests will be affected. And through growing environmental
awareness the topic of “UGA” will very soon become a very important sphere of public
interest and a subject of claims by citizens against the responsible public bodies. The power
of such public interest – pushed by using the new social media - should not be
underestimated!
5.2.5 Social norms
Social norms are also changing. In the early 1990s, when behavior in public spaces was
often judged by society, it was also a topic for comedy. For example, Minh Vuong, a
comedian made a comparison between western and Vietnamese society in a television
series. She made a joke that in Vietnam, kissing in public spaces was condemned, but not
‘making water’. Lately, Vietnamese are more open when people show their private
emotions in public places. How couples behave, in parks especially, was judged to be too
personal, too private and people should not do that in public. It is the opposite to western
society.
These opinions are slowly changing and more and more young people (like to) show their
private emotions in public.
5.3 Lifestyles of local people
Lifestyle is utterly integral to the general common social change of a society. Lifestyle is a
very individual, personal habit, an attitude of single people, which has an extremely
complex structure, touching nearly all spheres of life and can be described by a broad
variety of features.
As several features are often characterised not only by a single person but many people,
these “lifestyle-feature-groups” might become relevant as a phenomenon or feature of
society and so also relevant for public bodies and even for public planning.
Thus the individual lifestyle features which might influence the usage of parks will be
discussed regarding the future development and possible impact on the demand of parks.
Lifestyles in Hanoi are recently characterised as consumer and urban lifestyles (see chapt.
3.2.4/5.). They are influenced by globalization and the market economy. As the economy
has been growing rapidly, globalization provides diverse lifestyles in western and eastern
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