
We are told that the Modern Dream came from European colonial powers that transported their model of industrial progress to colonial cities such as Hanoi, Vietnam through a “mission civilisatrice.” However, modernity was and continues to be a malleable dream. Taken up by colonialists and Vietnamese nationalists alike over the course of the 20th century, industrial development tied city (re)building to socio-economic restructuring and nation-building within the context of Vietnam’s emergence on the world stage. The industrial paradigm was not only a mode of production, but created new urban publics of laborers and consumers, from colonial subjects to a modern and self-sufficient "new Vietnamese people" in the post-independence era.
















