Local Sustainable Development Indicators and Urbanization in Vietnam, What Are the Good Questions? The Case of the City of Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta

With nearly 100 million inhabitants, Vietnam is at an historic crossroads of spatial and demographic change that will shape it for the decades to come. The country’s urban population has effectively reached 37%, with an annual growth rate of around 3%. This rapid urbanization process for a country that is still predominantly rural is mainly taking place in its two major metropolises—Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi—and is spreading from North to South along the sea via several large agglomerations. In the South, this growth is primarily occurring in the Mekong Delta region. This phenomenon is intrinsically linked to the country’s political and economic opening, which began in the late 1980s with the Doi Moi. This boom has continued since that time thanks to highly diversified industrial production, the exportation of agricultural and manufactured products, and the proliferation of offerings and businesses in the service sector. In the field of urban studies, little is known about the dynamics of small and medium-sized cities and their function as intermediate cities in their regions. Our case study explored Chau Doc in the An Giang province, at the intersection of the Bassac and Chau Doc rivers (branches of the Mekong) along the Cambodian border. The city has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, mainly due to religious tourism. In fact, of the more than 7 million visitors come to Chau Doc over the course of the year, less than 5% are foreigners. It is also a commercial and administrative center that sells agricultural products for the whole region. According to interviews conducted there with both administrative authorities and the general population, the city is facing serious water issues (sanitation, water contamination, flooding) as well as problems in terms of garbage collection, recycling and traffic congestion, among others. Solutions to these and other issues must be implemented in medium and long-term planning, which should translate a vision of continuous growth for cities’ futures. Public authorities are interested but do not have the tools necessary to control the situation. For this reason, we argue in favor of working on urban development of intermediate cities such as Chau Doc based on Local Sustainable Development Indicators (SDI), drawing inspiration from various experiments conducted around the world, in the future. While these indicators have been accepted by the Vietnamese authorities, they are generally applied at the national level. However, if used as the first tool of innovative urban planning, they would enable cities to develop plans and initiatives based on rational and objective criteria.