The changes of place attachment before and after 1975 in Ho Chi Minh City

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to understand how conflicts and the recovery processes have impacted on the people’s social values as well as place attachment in a post-conflict city. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam is used as the case study. Sense of place, place attachment and disruption in place theories has been used as theoretical framework to understand the human impacts and to analyze the experiences of Saigoneses. Data was collected through three methods: secondary data, field observations and one-on-one personal interviews with eight residents as well as semistructured interviews with forty residents which were conducted in Ho Chi Minh City. Qualitative data was analyzed in-depth through the analytic bracketing approach. The study indicated that the conflicts had caused a strong disruption on Vietnam resulted millions of Vietnamese had fled. During the recovery process, changes took place as the ideology of the country change from republic to socialist and from a command economy to a socialist-oriented market economy. As Ho Chi Minh City grows rapidly, people from outskirt started to immigrate to the city for different purposes. As revealed from the interviews with respondents, they were still able to cope with the changes in replacing or restoring the place attachments throughout these 35 years. Ho Chi Minh City is still their native city which holds an important role. The major finding showed that Saigoneses were attached to the setting of the place and to the people. Nevertheless, the place belongingness has been transformed from home, street and village which are small in scale and where intimate relationships are developed to open space and park and even coffee shop where the flow of people is huge with changes in people happen daily.