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

media”, like newspapers, take information from those blogs as initiate information to
provide their own information channels. (EXPERT-F 2012).
Vietnamese mentality is accommodating, meaning they are easy going as regards social
life, with policies when those do not impact directly on their vital benefits (e.g. land and
finance) (opinion of EXPERTS A,B,C,F 2012). “It is true that people just claim strongly in
the cases of their hardship in life” (EXPERT-H 2012).
The innovation of social media spread all over the world with dramatic speed and became
totally popular and fashion, but meanwhile it seems that these tools have reached their
peak. Due to the large number of fields of application, social media will stay in the market
and be used on a high level. But the applications will change: they will be used less for
simple communication functions which young people use mostly, and more for commercial
purposes, organizing and coordinating applications.
Integrated media are “a shift to digital” (MATTHAES 2011). One finding from this study
of behaviour of internet users in Vietnam confirmed that young people use the internet
mostly just to express themselves. And this application does not compete with a visit to a
park.
Furthermore, on the one hand these new social media are mostly used by (very) young
people and do not touch the senior generation very much. It seems on the other hand that
these new media are time-consuming but nevertheless do not compete with other activities -
the young people continue to meet friends in reality. The group of people who become
addicted to these media is very small and thus they will not reduce the potential number of
park visitors on a relevant level.
5.3.3 Promenade: see and be seen
“The community of modern consumers was overwhelmingly an urban population, a
relatively new phenomenon in the Vietnamese context. Unlike China and Japan, for
example, at the turn of the twentieth century, Vietnam had little urban tradition. Pretwentieth-century
cities had generally been very small, and had served quite limited
purposes” (DUTTON 2012: 23).
Nowadays young people in Vietnam like mostly western lifestyles, follow international
fashion and habits (LESHKOWICH/SCHWENKEL 2012: 95 ff.). They like to own brand
clothing, change their hairstyles often and love shopping. All these visible features of
modern lifestyle need to be shown to friends, at least. So young people need to have a
public space where they can demonstrate their outfit to friends and to the public.
Indeed, DRUMMOND (2012: 80) summarizes the previous studies on ‘middle-class or
classes in Asia’ as they all “highlight the shopping malls and supermarkets which both cater
to and create the demand for consumption of goods; the appearance of condominiums and
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