ABSTRACT
Over the last decades bicycles have been substituted for motorbikes1 at a remarkable pace in Vietnam. The whole country is now seemingly driving motorbikes, and statistics show that on average every Vietnamese household owns a motorised two-wheeler (GSO 2012). In the cities they are now everpresent, creating a constant soundscape of buzzing and honking. The frenzy of millions of motorbikes has become an icon of the new Vietnam that has been emerging so rapidly from the rubbles of war and extreme poverty. In the most recent decade, however, it has been the motorbike’s turn to be challenged. In an increasingly affluent Vietnam, car ownership has seen a steep increase, particularly in urban areas. As the car arises as a strong competitor in terms of comfort, status, and scarce road space, transport in Vietnam seems set for another transition. The radical changes of Vietnamese streetscapes are part of a larger process of socio-economic transformations in the country since the onset of the economic reforms known as doi moi2 in 1986. Put briefly, the reforms consisted of a range of policies breaking with the former planned economy, such as decollectivising agriculture, allowing private economic initiatives and private accumulation and, crucially, opening up Vietnam’s economy to regional and global markets (see for example Hansen 2015a; Masina 2006; Van Arkadie and Mallon 2003; Fforde and De Vylder 1996). Following the reforms Vietnam had one of the fastest-growing economies in the world in the 1990s and 2000s (Malesky et al. 2011), and the World Bank (2013) now considers the country a ‘development success story’. This chapter considers how the rapid motorisation of Vietnam’s streets can be understood in relation to the multi-scalar development processes associated with doi moi. Furthermore, the chapter asks what the case of cars and motorbikes can tell us about Vietnam’s development trajectory both in terms of industrial aspirations and socio-economic changes. Taking Vietnam’s capital city Hanoi as a starting point, the chapter analyses the escalation of consumption of private vehicles following reforms through macro-scale political-economic changes as well as everyday mobility practices. The findings are based on ‘motorbike ethnography’ in Hanoi (Hansen 2016b), combining mobile participant observation with interviews with car and motorbike owners, policy makers, retailers and manufacturers.
