In this study, we extend the scope of research on the urban transition in Vietnam to focus on peri-urbanization in small and medium-sized towns using visual data, primarily photographs shot during field research in Buon Ma Thuot and Tam Ky in 2014 and 2015.

Peri-urban areas can be defined as frontier space of urbanisation, globalization, and governance. They simultaneously embody global discourses of modernity, sustainability, and development as well as local practices of everyday life. Thus, an increasing level of fragmentation emerges which includes a unique setting of rural and urban, modern and traditional material pattern located in the peri-urban framework. These interwoven patterns found in peri-urban space produce layers of the past, present and future in the same space. This leads to a multi-level landscape of urban planning and self-organization, of simultaneity of rural and urban, formality and informality. Consequently, this creates a space of encounter, interaction, and contestation between different actors and ideas.

By using visual data, this study maps peri-urban space and the process of peri-urbanization in small town Vietnam and thereby reconstructs three dimensions of peri-urban space: (1) urban aspirations of the local actors, (2) transformation including processes of material, functional, symbolic change and (3) mobility in the everyday life. It illustrates an emerging, ambiguous and conflicting representation of a local discourse, which includes at the same time, local, national and global narratives of modernity.

In collaboration with Orcain system was developed to support the analysis over 7000 photos taken in Tam Ky City and Buon Ma Thuot in 2014 and 2015. Further cooperation on machine learning, data visualization, and mapping is planned.

Status: Active