Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

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became a ‘barrack city’ (Nguyen Q. V. 1996) as a new
scale of infrastructure (including an airfield and military
quays) overlaid the territory. Two strong corridors of
urbanity emerged: one developed linearly along the Hau
River, connecting Cantho to Long Xuyen (52 kilometers
to the northwest) and the other linking Cantho with to the
inland city of Soc Trang (52 kilometers to the southeast).
Cantho became the center for ‘supplying, storing and
redistributing goods’ from Saigon to the extensive rural
areas of the delta (Nguyen Quang Vinh 1996:48). Its first
industrial zones became operation in 1968; low-lands
were filled and large tarmac surfaces became an integral
component of the urban landscape.
Fig. 1: Cantho is built on the higher land at the intersection of the
Hau (lower branch of the Mekong) and Cantho Rivers.
to 1880, the total cultivated area in Cochin China was
estimated at 552,000 hectares and between 1880-1937,
irrigation increased this to 2,200,000 hectares (Hickey
1964:15). The region harvests 2-3 crops of rice per year
and remains the country’s ‘rice basket’.
Urbanizing the Territory
As infrastructural interventions made more land habitable,
urbanization rapidly took hold. Cantho was reaffirmed
by French imperialist expansion as a node and was
equipped with a port, ferry system, military camp, market,
town hall, treasury and prison – other social infrastructure
followed. The grid of the colonial town grew along the
Cantho riverbank and its urban geometry corresponded
to the prevailing cooling winds of the southeast, northwest
monsoons. Colonial planning was a mechanism
of social segregation and the French lived in primarily in
garden city district while the Vietnamese – intermingled
with Hoa (overseas Chinese) – lived in the denser core
near the market and quays. By 1954, Cantho’s population
was 55,000 (14% of the provincial population)
(Durand and Le Van Anh 1996:70).
Following the 1954 French defeat at Dien Bien Phu,
Cantho and its surroundings fell within the ‘Fourth Tactical
Zone’ during America’s occupation of South Vietnam.
From the 1960s onwards, the population of Cantho
steadily increased due to migration of people from North
Vietnam, the Strategic Hamlet Program – where ‘rural
pacification’ led to mass movement of rural inhabitants to
cities – and for those fleeing (during the Second Indochine
War) extensive carpet bombing in the countryside.
The city was developed as an industrial center, commercial
liaison and naval base for the entire delta. The city
Cantho’s population witnessed a near continuous swelling
– except for a dip between 1975-86 when harsh
de-urbanization post-war policies sent a portion of its population
to re-education camps or forced them to resettle
in new economic zones (Thrift and Forbes 1986). Today’s
burgeoning population of approximately 1.1 million is
within a large area (1,402 km2) and the city has a special
status (along with Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Danang,
Hai Phong and Hue) in that it is considered of national
importance and under direct control of the State in Hanoi.
The population increase is to continue to rise, whereas
all restrictions on residence permits have been abolished
since 1993 and the city appears in a state of continuously
emerging. The masterplan of Cantho to 2020 has been
developed in a manner similar to those used throughout
Vietnam – whereby figures from socio-economic scenarios
are directly transferred to mono-functional land use
zoning. With a nod towards the specificity of the place,
Cantho’s development is to be (theoretically) oriented
towards the northwest and south and the existing city
center is to be de-densified – for hygienic measures, as
justified by authorities.
Cantho is slated to become the region’s premier industrial
center. As throughout the country, there is an emphasis
on the development of industrial zones (IZs) and export
processing zones (EPZs) to increase industrial capability,
foster exportation, provide jobs, education and training
opportunities. In the imagery of a Singapore-like super
city, the large Hung Phu EPZ (938 ha) on the southeast
bank of the Cantho River is to be a state-of-the-art port
facility and Nam Song Hau (1722 ha) will become a
new living and housing district. The EPZ is envisaged
to attract high-tech and processing industry, processing
industries – but as the present-day financial crisis is
proving, economic reliance on such an export business
is highly risky. At the same time, the ecological perspective
needs attention, whereas the entire operation (for
Hung Phu and Nam Song Hau) requires 2-3 meters of
fill (dredged sand from the Hau River) in order to make
foundations for new urbanization. The repercussions on
the increased intensity of flooding will surely be felt in the
Papers