Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon

Front matter

LUXURY ano RUBBLE

ERIK HARMS

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Part II. Rubble

4. Thu Thiém Futures Past: A Short History of Seeing without Seeing

5. Building a Civilized, Modern, and Sentimental City 6. From the Rubble

Conclusion: Civility and Dispossession vii

27 58

117 154 183 viii CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

223 229 261 275

0.1. 0.2. 0.3. 0.4.

1.1. 1.2.

1.3.

4.2.

4-3.

4.4.

4.5.

4.6.

4.8. 4.9.

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Phu My Bridge 2

Map of Ho Chi Minh City 3

Phu My Hung, District 7, Ho Chi Minh City 9

Tht: Thiém, District 2, Ho Chi Minh City 10

Map of Phá My Hung 32

A typical villa 39

A semidetached villa zoned for mixed-use residential and commercial use 40

Housing plots with private home construction 40

Nguyên Van Linh and Nguyén Düc Cánh streets, looking south 42 Phu My Hung, looking north 43

Park signs outlining required civilized behavior 61

The Starlight Bridge (Câu Ánh Sao) 88

A typical café in Phu My Hung 107

Thu Thiém, looking east from Saigon’s bën Bach Dang waterfront 119 A French map of Saigon 120

Map of Saigon, November 1964 122

Detail of Ho Chi Minh City tourist map — 123

Ho Chi Minh City tourist map, ca. 2005 124

Detail from reproduction of the "Tran Van Hoc map of 1815” 127 The right bank of the Saigon River 129

Sunday Mass at the Tht Thiém church 132

Courtyard of the Thà Thiém Congregation of the

Lovers of the Holy Cross 133

ILLUSTRATIONS

. Le Brun Map of Saigon in 1795 136

. Project for a City of 500,000 Souls in Saigon by Colonel Coffyn, 1862 . Hébrard's plan for extension and development of Saigon — 138

. Thu Thiém plans during the Ngô Dinh Diém period, ca. 1957 139

. Thu Thiém plans during the Ngô Dinh Diém period, ca. 1958 140

. 1965 Doxiadis Plan for Tht Thiém 141

. Doxiadis plan for developing a structure of hierarchically nested urban communities 143 View of Ihü Thiém, ca. 1960s 145

. Detail of 1965 Doxiadis Plan for Thu Thiém 146 . Wurster Plan of 1972 149

The Thu Thiém Ferry 155

Thu Thiém before demolition 156

Flattening the landscape in Thu Thiém 156

Thu Thiém after demolition 157

New billboards in Tht Thiém 159

Master plan for the Tht Thiém New Urban Zone, displayed outside the Peoples Committee office 165 1995 Investment brochure for Tht Thiém 172

The remains of Tam’s Home 184

. View from the “rubble café" 203

Image saved on Tam’s cameras 209