Published March 2025
I am writing this column from my place in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam (HCMC) where I have been living for the past few months. I shuttle back and forth from Brisbane!
It’s been a long, strange journey for me that began when we received an offer in 2009 to work on some projects here.
We opened an office in Vietnam because a major client here advised us it would be in our best interests. With help from Austrade’s Trade Commissioner we were awarded an investment licence and I received a design licence. The exercise was painfully long and bureaucratic, but we eventually succeeded.
Initially it was extraordinarily hard as I didn’t speak Vietnamese. To describe the building and planning codes here as arcane is understating it. I sought books on Vietnamese culture only to discover most clients wanted to adopt the symbols of Western culture: large buildings, opulent houses and air-conditioned malls. They want to become a New World City.
Yet in HCMC there are still tightly clustered communities comprising 85 per cent of the city’s population that have retained their traditional village matrices. The Vietnamese name for them is hems.
The city was formed as a result of a French invasion in 1859. A city plan was drawn up using French military planners and the existing villages destroyed. The villagers were relocated into the new city framework and they not only survived the colonial structure but also three major wars, and still continue to flourish. Remarkable!
At a lunch in late 2023 I happened to mention my interest in the hems to a UQ Professor of Architecture who told me UQ may be interested in seeing this become a thesis. I am now enrolled as an HDR student there and researching whether the hems may provide ways we can learn to deal sustainably with future growth and densification in Brisbane. Despite the hems’ densities, they are strong self-organised communities with low crime rates and decisions made by negotiation rather than by government edict.
Unlike Brisbane, HCMC has had to deal with civil wars including an influx of 1 million refugees during the American occupation. Ironically what damaged the city fabric more than the wars was the adoption of a market economy in 1989, which has seen not only the average height of residential structures increasing from 2 to 3 stories to 4 to 5 stories in the inner city but also new high-rise towers. Yet the hems have survived. I love the fact there is a rich diversity in these neighbourhoods with disparate uses working successfully alongside each other.
Perhaps there is an opportunity for our urban designers here to re-evaluate their approach to urban planning and that we should consider more self-regulated and diverse communities.
It isn’t to make our own places into hems but rather learn about what makes these organic communities successful in the modern world.
