Abstract
This paper aims to identify and discuss urban governance related issues in Vietnam through an in-depth investigation on housing development in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). In the literature review on urban governance regarding housing policy, the paper highlights five dimensions of urban governance that Richard Stren (2007) proposed: capacity, finance, diversity, security and authority. After that, the paper examines major challenges in capacity and authority dimensions of urban governance in HCMC based on extensive working experience with the city’s technical departments and empirical analysis on various secondary documents on housing development,. The findings show that HCMC has a huge responsibility of providing housing for its growing population but receives inadequate decentralization from central government, causing a lack of financial resources, an institutional fragmentation and a weak coordination framework with poor community engagement. The paper concludes that current configuration of urban governance in HCMC is not sufficient to address housing as cross-cutting and multi-faceted issue and proposes integrated approaches towards a good governance system with broader implications that go beyond the single case of Ho Chi Minh City.
