Semester at Sea Fall 2006 Voyage |
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TABLE
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Multi-Sited Ethnography Project: Cultural Influences in Urban Development in Large Cities - Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City and IstanbulBy Wren Chan INTRODUCTION Urban
development is the discipline of balancing the needs of the community
which takes into account the physical and social environment of the
community it is applied to. Although there is a growing focus of
urban development in economic development, the influences of the
community still significantly affects this process. In this
multi-sited ethnography, I will investigate the influences of culture
on urban development of various districts of various cities encountered
in Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam;
and Istanbul, Turkey. BEN TRANH MARKET, HO CHI MINH CITY ANALYSIS Each one of the cities that was described in the preceding chapters were different in many ways. Ho Chi Minh City is a city that is administered by the totalitarian Vietnamese Communist government. Hong Kong is a city administered by a municipal government that has some democratic elements even though it is a legal part of the People’s Republic of China. Istanbul on the other hand is a city in a country that is thoroughly democratic. Vietnam in the early to mid 20th century was a French colony while Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997. These factors including history and cultural influences affect the urban development of the cities up to the modern times. Hong Kong, a former British colony generally has a grid outline which is influenced mostly by the British though in some parts of the New Territories, there may be some deviation. Urban development and revitalization in the New Territories have been largely influenced by the birth of Modern Hong Kong due to the Second World War and the Communist takeover of mainland China which resulted in merchants and refugees flooding into the island. In the decades before and to a lesser extent today, Yuen Long served the purpose of traditional market town for people from the villages in northwest New Territories to shop and trade their goods which may include crops and fish. Although Hong Kong currently functions as a finance and trade hub, much of the economy has shifted towards the service sector. Currently there are a wide variety of the stores which is a testament to the variety of demands of the market which has largely shift from providing agricultural produces to providing a variety of goods that an urban dweller may need. The shift in prominence in the last few decades from a farmer’s market to a commercial district coincides with the shift of priorities and focus of the people of Hong Kong. While Alan Smart, in Participating in the Global: Transnational Social Networks and Urban Anthropology, focused on the social effects on the workers of Hong Kong’s shift and subsequent control of manufacturing in the Pearl River Delta region, it is important to emphasize the effect on Hong Kong as well. Some of the buildings which are inhabited by the stores today were textile manufacturing firms a few decades ago before the opening up of China. With unskilled manufacturing jobs lost, Confucian values of merit through education has become a secondary force along with the cheaper wages and lower land value in China in further encouraging the shift towards the service sector. The government has taken the initiative in increasing the trend of post-secondary education for the secondary school dropouts which includes vocational schools.
Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, as a result of its French influence
has wide boulevards that intersect at varying angles. The
intersections tend to be areas in which a monument is located or where
an economic center such as a market develops. Ben Tranh Market
lies on one such intersection between two boulevards. The
placement of the shops in the market can be considered urban planning
to some degree due to the necessity of the market to respond to the
needs of the community that exists around the market and to a lesser
extent the city. One can’t help but to notice the chaotic
arrangement of the shops. From a cultural perspective it is said
that Vietnamese value their clans over family. This Vietnamese
cultural aspect may carry itself into the modern era where the
shopkeepers in the market see one another as members of the same “clan”
due to proximity or wares sold. The development of the clans may
have been initially driven by the need of a community to work together
and be identified together in both the ancient and modern times.
This may have carried over into the Ben Tranh Market in which contrary
to expectations of a random placement of shops selling different wares,
the shops that sell similar wares are generally grouped together to the
point that the signs above are no longer relevant or useful for that
matter in locating any given shop. In the same way outside of Ben
Tranh Market, some of the shops that sell similar wares are located
nearby although supply and demand and competition is starting to play a
vital part in varying the selections of the stores.
Istanbul, Turkey which was originally a Greco-Roman city by the name of
Byzantium/Constantinople was the capital of the Byzantine Empire until
it was capture by the Ottomans. Though the Old City is largely
intact and unchanged with respect to the street plan since the ancient
times, the shift of the Turkish Republic to the secularization and
Westernization boosted the city’s population. In Istiklal Avenue
which is a wide avenue in the style of European cities through which
mostly pedestrians travel through, the many streets and alleys that
crisscross the avenue still retain an Oriental feel. This may be
attributed to the fact that urban planning is often done within the
scope and limits of initial city layout. The result is Istanbul
swallowing the outlying neighborhoods and in the process developing
like a European city in some areas such as Istiklal Avenue and some
areas with makeshift housing constructed by the poorer segments of the
population as discussed by Jenny White’s On Istanbul – Bridge
between
Europe and Asia. The dilemma with the poorer segments of the
population is reminiscent of Cairo in Remaking the Modern – Space,
Relocation and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo in which
Farha
Ghannam explored problems faced by Cairo in attempting to
modernize and take care of the displaced population. The dwellers
of the makeshift housings are facing a unique dilemma compared to their
counterparts in Egypt due to the fact that the makeshift housing is
still illegal and can be taken down at any moment by the government. |
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comments: wrenc@andrew.cmu.edu
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