Rethinking City Classification System in Vietnam: Towards Urban Sustainability and People-Centered Development

Abstract

This paper presents an original attempt to bring forward extended perspectives about the City Classification System (CCS) in Vietnam. For many years, the CCS has played a central role the development of Vietnam national urban system as well as a motivating guideline for individual cities. However, (1) aspects of sustainable urban development are underrepresented among the CCS indicators and (2) the CCS remains a top-down, rigid policy which takes away much of the local development context and their developmental challenges. It is argued that Vietnam CCS needs adjusting to better reflect the multi-dimensional nature of urban development process (especially sustainability) and to better comprehend people-oriented, local development.