THE MARKET AND THE CITY : A CASE STUDY OF THE THIRTY-SIX STREETS DISTRICT, HANOI CITY, VIETNAM

Abstract

A city can not continue without her past, as well as its ingredients; the most important of all is the human life. The inhabitants of the city should know from where they came from before stepping forward to future. Without appropriate acknowledgement of the past, the city will gradually loose its own identity and the mental picture. Other than that, the past also plays an important role in shaping a city fabric. Without continuity with the past, the city development will be consequently meaningless. For this dissertation, my primary concern will be about evaluating the importance of market, the Thirty-Six streets district, to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. To the Southeast Asian people, particularly for Vietnamese, market place is not only a place for grocery and shopping activities but also a community congregation place. The tradition of common people gradually evolved from these gathering places and so is the social class distinction of sophisticated culture. It is unfortunate to note that all the essence of traditional gathering places are gradually deterioting because of the external agents like Chinese and French’s cultures. Learning the qualities of these areas in the past, and the way they transformed through times will help in evaluating the exact procedure to provide a suitable treatments to that area, without losing the characteristics of the site. By analysis the factors affecting in urban morphology and housing typology including the normal people behavior and their daily activities will suggest a suitable intervention for the future