Person

Tran, Hoai Anh

Hoai Anh Tran is Associate Professor in Urban Studies and is responsible for the bachelor program Urban Development and Planning. Teach in Architecture and Urban Form, Planning Theory and Theory of Sciences and Methodology. My researches deal with the link between urbanisation, urban spaces production, urban policies and social justice from the perspective of the global south (with a focus on Vietnam). The researches examine these issues in terms of discourses and practices and seek to provide a critical analysis of government’s urban policies and urban development rhetoric in a transitional society such as Vietnam. They highlight the complex relationship between state and society and aim at acquiring insights into housing and spatial practices of different socio-economic groups and how they are suppressed or facilitated by government’s urban policies. My researches are closely connected to the body of research on the contradictory nature of contemporary urban changes in the global South, and how various form of power finds modes of material expressions in urban forms. A recurring theme is how the discourses of modernisation, beautification, civility and order are manifestations of state social engineering and are used supress differences and spatial practices of the urban poor. My collaboration with urban researchers in Asia has also resulted in book chapters in three anthologies that cover urban development and housing studies in Asia: The Routledge Handbook of Urbanization in Southeast Asia, Routledge, edited by Padawangi, Rita (2018); Housing Policy, Wellbeing and Social Development in Asia, Routledge Studies in International Real Estate, Routledge, edited by Rebecca Lai Har & Ha, Seong-Kyu (2018); and the forthcoming Neoliberal Urbanism, Contesting Cities and Housing in Asia. Palgrave, edited by Shin, Hyun Bang & Chen, Yi-Ling (2019). In terms of discursive contribution, my researches provide a discussion of the use and relevance of urban discourses originated in the West (such as gentrification, neoliberalization, modernization, modernism, privatisation of public housing) in the context of Vietnam. The researches highlight the working of a complex transitional system that produces hybrid urban strategies in which the ideals of socialist modernism combine with economically motivated neoliberal rhetoric. I consider that my researches contribute with a global (South) outlook that can be enriching for the research environment at the Department of Urban studies, where the majority of research projects are predominantly European centred. My most recent research project deals with the discourses and politics of public space and its relation to the politics of property in urban planning practice in Sweden.