Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam by population and the third largest in Southeast Asia. Residents and visitors remember it (and continue to refer informally to it) as Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. While Ho Chi Minh City today retains the vibrant street culture and entrepreneurial spirit for which it has long been known, its physical environment has been transformed since the 1990s by migration, foreign investment, and economic growth.
Even as Hanoi remains the center of political power in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City is the country’s economic capital, accounting for nearly a quarter of national GDP. Per-capital incomes in Ho Chi Minh City are now more than twice Vietnam’s average. Growth has brought high-rises and improved access to consumer goods, but it has also been accompanied by rising income equality, environmental degradation, corruption, and anxiety about the lost of community and cultural heritage. Ho Chi Minh City is thus an ideal place for students to think critically and contextually about development, and to apply historical, environmental, and cultural analyses to the study of development in Southeast Asia and the Global South.