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

certain social community, they now have more chances to promote their own capacities
(LUAN 2009: 93 ff.).
A socialist market economy follows the rules of a market economy and is intended to
reinforce the objective of the socialist state to achieve a ‘strong country with wealthy
people, social justice, democracy and civilization’. The development of a market economy
brings opportunities for the people to develop their abilities and exploit natural sources to
spur the country's development. It provides a context within which people may develop
new ways of economic thinking in which benefits must be considered as the top priority.
Competition in economics encourages people to consolidate all their potential to find the
best solutions for economic problems. At the same time it provides opportunities and
challenges which force people to maximize their efforts and mobilises resources in a way
which which a planned economy does not favour. The rapid transformation of the markets
brings with it increasing material and spiritual needs of people in all fields of their life.
As a consequence, DAN (2011) states that in newly established market economies, the
trend of development is to sacrifice everything – including cultural values – to the
production of goods. Places of natural beauty became places for making cultural business. .
For example, the parks lost their functionality as free public place where people show and
enjoy the culture as well as relaxation. Since then, the parks have enclosed fences to collect
entrance fee. That makes the meaning of the word 'public' in the term 'public park' no
longer hold its true meaning.
In a market economy workers are paid the going rate and egalitarianism is no longer
accepted as in a centrally planned economy. Thus there are negative consequences to the
introduction of a market economy. Amongst those negative consequences are (KINH
2012: 76):
deepening social gap between rich and poor;
broadening the distinction between rural and urban areas,
. increasing difference among professions;
raising many contradictions in society.
Under the impact of the market economy, the degradation of morality and behaviour is
obviously happening. Market mechanism supports a belief, that the acquisition of
possessions and money are the most important goals in life features. This powerful trend
dominates the behaviour of many people and as a consequence moral values in Vietnamese
society are under pressure.
3.1.2 The impact of policies and institutions
Traditional Vietnamese attitudes of people towards others in the community are that "the
community cares for every member" in each village and that the "state cares for all issues
of its all citizens” (HA 2011: 22). These long held attitudes have throughout history had an
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