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

holiday (e.g., National Day, Labour Day and weekends); while urban people tend to go to
countryside in these occasions.
Parks are used daily neighbourhood residents, at the weekend by suburban residents and
only occasionally by people from the countryside.
For suburban residents, they go to parks more likely visitors than daily users. Also by
chance they visit parks or as a public place they go there to relax.
3.2.4 Urban lifestyle in Hanoi
The introduction of a market economy has quickly changed many aspects of life in
Vietnam, particularly in Hanoi. Its impact can be seen in the abundance of goods and the
changes in people's living standard, spiritual life, and lifestyle and in the behaviour of social
groups. Those changes often contain both positive and negative factors.
Changes in social structure and living conditions of the urban population will inevitably
lead to changes in the pattern of their behaviour and lifestyle. In line with the changes in
social status, occupation and social structure tends to drive people to become "marketoriented".
This process can be thought of as an "urbanized lifestyle" (see also PAWAR et.
al. 2010: 39; NEAMTU 2012: 1).
On the one hand, market economy forces people and society to be more dynamic and
effective in all kinds of social and economic activities. The market economy also enhances
the consumer’s positive perception of economic growth and this tends to devalue traditional
culture.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that market economy also creates chances for consumer
lifestyle, individualism and pragmatic behaviour. More importantly, it can harm traditional
cultural characteristics of Hanoi capital. It has been commonly accepted that foreign culture
was not selectively imported into Vietnam.
In many cases, individualism while bringing material benefits to several individuals does
not benefit the community as a whole. The stratification between rich and poor creates clear
differences in the lifestyle of the rich and the poor.
As a result, many different factors affect urban lifestyle and the evolution of an ‘urban
society’.
3.2.5 Activities as public visible features of lifestyles
No doubt, lifestyle is an abstract concept. Often lifestyle is the consequence of entire
activities of society’s members. Nevertheless, lifestyles can be seen as the product of
objective factors that mould the activities of individuals as member of society. For example,
a person decides not to do an activity, because he thinks he belongs to that society and
those people in that society will not do such kind of activities. Lifestyle is represented
through many features of culture and of lives. A visible feature of lifestyle which we can
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