Forced Displacement and Urban Renewal in Ho Chi Minh City. The Evolutions of Procedures

The procedures of forced displacement in H. Chi Minh City are called "land recovery" or "land liberation" and partake of a complex urban land history, where informal uses of land plots have been a constant. Analysing the evolution of these procedures since the reforms of the end of the 1980's offers an original perspective on the legislative and institutional renewal of the "socialist market economy" in Viet Nam. The implementation of contemporary urban projects is inevitably facing the lack of available land as well as the intricacies of the inhabitants' different administrative and legal statuses. Therefore, the forced displacement of inhabitants is an inevitable step for every urban renewal project. But the cost of these procedures and the complexity of their implementation are now a major cause for debate. New urban stakeholders are finally taking part in a game that used to be strictly limited to state actors. During the last two decades, not only have the procedures of forced displacement evolved, but their goals and the type of populations concerned have also changed.