Since the 1970s, the fringes of large Asian cities have
experienced many changes, associated with the process
of metropolisation (foreign investment in industry,
roads and housing infrastructure) and with movement
towards the new places of production, namely the industrial
parks. Migratory flows emanating from underprivileged areas
head for the outskirts of the city or the surroundings of industrial
parks where a low-cost rental market is developing in urbanised
villages.
In Vietnam, since the economic liberalisation of the
1980s, rationales of distribution of settlement have changed:
restrictions on people’s mobility were lifted, engendering a rural
exodus, individual initiative has been embraced and enabled the
development of a very active informal economy that demands
high levels of workforce in peri-urban countryside, particularly
in craft villages and those specialised in market gardening.
Thanks to the major hydraulic works of the 1960s-1970s,
drainage and flood protection have been improved and
rice-farming systems intensified. The multi-activity and multiple
uses of land provide rural households with the means to remain
in their already very densely populated villages.
In situ demographic growth is added to by migrations
originating at once from the countryside and from town
centres. In Hà Nội’s surroundings, dormitory villages develop
rapidly and present expropriated villagers with ways of
making money. These villages undergo rapid change and
suffer serious social problems caused by the difficulties of
housing and integrating migrants, young for the most part,
with limited resources