Civility’s Footprint: Ethnographic Conversations about Urban Civility and Sustainability in Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnamese discourses and practices of “civility” (văn minh) both intersect and come into conflict with conceptions of urban sustainability. On one level, as ideas, both sustainability and civility are born of the same will to discipline the present-day actions of individuals in order to achieve long-term, future-oriented goals for social collectives. On the level of lived practice, however, the actual lifestyles that accompany contemporary Vietnamese concepts of civility present challenges to sustainable cities. Conversely, many ecologically sustainable urban lifestyles, when viewed through the lens of civility, appear to be socially unsustainable. Ongoing tensions between the concepts of civility and sustainability in Ho Chi Minh City suggest that a nuanced understanding of civility and sustainability in contemporary Vietnamese cities might most productively emerge if one considers the two concepts in dialogue with each other.