Tube Housing: An Urban Identity of Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City

Submission note: A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.

Modern Asian cities have experienced rapid growth that is often jarring for their unique socio-historical characteristics. Saigon-Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and its basic housing archetype is a prime example of this tension. The city emerged in the seventeenth century, but its most rapid growth occurred after the end of the Vietnam–America War in 1975. HCMC has key elements that form its unique structure, of which tube housing—homes shaped like a tube or a pipe that are longer than they are wide—is the most significant constituent. Tube housing acts as both housing and an urban system used for workplaces, investments and other uses; each purpose shapes the urban form. Nevertheless, this form of housing contrasts with the globalised vision of Saigon-HCMC as a world city, which attracts FDI. This study examines tube housing in detail and in conjunction with the city’s other distinctive components, including transport, population, streets and laneways, and social dimensions of everyday life. Housing affordability and trends are also examined to identify tube housing’s position. Intensive qualitative and quantitative research, interviews, photos, case studies are used to explore and unveil the city’s distinctive structure. This thesis argues that tube housing is a modern development that is lively and adaptive to people’s everyday life in the built form of Saigon-HCMC. In particular, it shows that the crucial period of its development as the dominant form of housing was the last quarter of the twentieth century, when the national government’s priority was rural and regional development and capitalist markets of all forms were repressed. Without large-scale injections of capital by the state or the market, Saigon-HCMC citizens had to build their own housing. This thesis celebrates their achievements by detailing how and why tube housing systems and cultures have become so crucial to the sustainability and liveability of the city. In doing so, it argues against the current government’s anti-tube housing policies.