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Abstract
This paper investigates a gap in the relationship between the physical city and current “smart city” solutions in the context of rapidly developing urban regions. In particular it reconsiders these two “realities”: the material, spatial and social qualities of cities, and the immersive qualities of hybrid digital interfaces such as augmented and virtual reality. With regard to both analog and digital realms, our research proposes an inclusive and participatory approach to the design and implementation of smart city technologies. Using Ho Chi Minh City (or HCMC) as a case study, it explores how a city’s tacit feedback, combined with mixed reality tools, can expand public accessibility of cities, and in particular of high-density districts. Activating the city through its citizens rather than relying on top-down political policies, this form of “augmented urbanism” advocates a community-based approach to transcending the smartness divide. Ho Chi Minh City offers many examples of shared, multifunctional spaces with localized forms of use and administration. However, these are under threat from intense urban development and subsequent environmental impact. This paper will suggest ways in which mixed reality tools could strengthen community engagement in neighborhoods that are marginalized or threatened by ongoing development, and how this process might also inform and bolster governmental support for locally-based initiatives. The research argues for the city itself (material and empirical) to identify, harness and leverage its own inherent forms of “smartness”. Integrating the city’s tacit knowledge with open-source platforms can ensure that the ongoing transformation of the city is a collective and intelligent one. This is also a way to provide persistent experiences within a radically and rapidly shifting urban environment.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
Notes
1 Milan Kundera, Slowness: A Novel (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1997), 39.
2 Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1997), 7–8.
3 Marie Gibert, Clément Musil, Emmanuelle Peyvel, and Juliette Segard, Producing and Living the City in Vietnam (Paris: International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter, 2016), 4.
4 Marie Gibert-Flutre, Towards a Micro-Geography of Ordinary Public Spaces in Hồ Chi Minh City (Paris/Vietnam: French Network for Asian Studies, 2017), 5.
5 Jacob Poushter, Caldwell Bishop, and Hanyu Chwe, Social Media Use Continues to Rise in Developing Countries but Plateaus Across Developed Ones (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2018), 15.
6 P. Times, “Tù’ nguyên cùa HEM & NGÕ,” Petrotimes, 2016. Available online: https://petrotimes.vn/tu-nguyen-cua-hem-ngo-434676.html (accessed April 19, 2019).
7 Ibid (accessed June 19, 2019).
8 Gilbert, Musil, Peyvel, Segard, Producing and Living the City, 32.
9 L. B. W. Drummond, “Street Scenes: Practices of Public and Private Space in Urban Vietnam,” Urban Studies 37 (2000): 2377–2391, 2389.
10 Archie Pizzini, “Observation and Negotiation at the Cultural Shoreline Vietnam, Rasquachismo and an Architectural Practice” (PhD diss., RMIT University, 2015), 25.
11 Andrew Stiff, anonymous interview, October–November 2017.
12 Ibid.
13 E. P. D. Harms, “Material Symbolism on Saigon’s Edge: The Political-Economic and Symbolic Transformation of Ho Chí Minh City’s Periurban Zones,” Pacific Affairs 84 (2011): 455–473, 469.
14 Annette Miae Kim, Sidewalk City: Remapping Public Space in Ho Chi Minh City (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 37.
15 Andrew Stiff, anonymous interview, October–November 2017.
16 Pizzini, “Observation and Negotiation”, 25, 40, 173.
17 Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider, and Jeremy Till, “Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture” (Abingdon, UK; New York, NY: Routledge, 2011), 134.
18 Erik Harms. “The Errors of a Wise Man, or the Perfections of a Fool: Everyday Wisdom and the Not-So-Smart Effects of Smart Ideas in the Thu Thiem New Urban Zone” (paper presented at the International Conference: An Aspiration of a Smart but Social City in Vietnam. Viet Nam National University, Ho Chi Minh City. 27–28 September, 2018).
19 Ibid.
20 Kim, Sidewalk City, 148.
21 Ibid.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Gretchen Wilkins
Gretchen Wilkins is the Head of Architecture/Architect-in-Residence at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA. Wilkins has been practicing and teaching architecture for nearly twenty years based in Michigan, Australia and Vietnam. Her practice includes built work, awarded competitions, funded urban research and design publication. Her current practice explores new models for density, industry and mobility in rapidly transforming cities. The Future Factory project in particular proposes new industrial building types for high-rise, high-volume production integrated with the public urban realm. She received her Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan and PhD in Architecture from RMIT University. Previously Gretchen was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan and Associate Professor at RMIT University in Australia and Vietnam.
Andrew Stiff
Andrew Stiff is an Associate Lecturer at RMIT University, based at the Ho Chi Minh City campus. Since he began teaching in 1998, Andrew has developed a career in digital arts, with stints at universities including the University of the Arts, London, and Linton University College, Malaysia. Andrew uses experimental video as a medium to develop his research. His work has been shown internationally – from the US to Japan. Andrew’s teaching areas are in experimental design, media cultures and developing socially engaged projects of Work Integrated Learning (WIL).