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University of California Press’s Open Access publishing
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Luxury and Rubble is the tale of two cities in Ho Chi Minh
City. It is the story of two planned, mixed-use residential and
commercial developments that are changing the face of
Vietnam’s largest city. Since the early 1990s, such
developments have been steadily reorganizing urban landscapes
across the country. For many Vietnamese, they are a symbol of the
country’s emergence into global modernity and of
post-socialist economic reforms. However, they are also sites of
great contestation, sparking land disputes and controversies over
how to compensate evicted residents. In this penetrating
ethnography, Erik Harms vividly portrays the human costs of urban
reorganization as he explores the complex and sometimes
contradictory experiences of individuals grappling with the forces
of privatization in a socialist country.
