Cities of the Global South constitute a wide band in terms of their integration into the global economy. For cities like Hanoi, the sustained influx of foreign direct investments has propelled them into playing increasingly important roles as manufacturing centres. Along with this new role is the influx of expatriate managers who watch overseas manufacturing subsidiaries. Our paper focuses on Korean expatriate neighbourhoods and their impacts on Hanoi. More specifically, we show how the presence of such communities has resulted in important changes in the host city, firstly in housing typology (such as the introduction of high-rise mixed-use complexes), and secondly, in cultural consumption. We argue that Korean privilege, cultural consumption practices, and the desire for support and solidarity within the Korean social network in Hanoi work to create new forms of city-building knowledge, one that originates from the neighbourhoods of these new and rich settlers in the city. Such forms of knowledge subsequently go on to reshape the economic, cultural and social spaces in the globalising city.
Neighbourhoods are places of social encounters on a daily basis, but they are getting insufficient attention from policy makers and urban studies in conceptualising the city. While the city is often the unit of analysis and boundaries of data collection, social constructions of the city are mostly from neighbourhoods. By shifting the analysis to the neighbourhood scale, we are moving scholarship and research on two fronts. First, we need to think about city building knowledge at a pedagogical and methodological level. Second, we want to examine processes and amenity creation at the neighbourhood scale and make visible the ways these add to city politics, economy, and culture. Articles in this special issue contribute to urban scholarship in the following ways: (i) neighbourhood as a method of urban studies; (ii) understanding urban politics and government; (iii) the role of urban informality and small businesses; and (iv) the role of traditional neighbourhood institutions in the social life of the city. Neighbourhoods can be poorly resourced and inward‐looking, but in many cases localised interests, relationships and organisations are capable of collective action, networking beyond their localities, and inspiring its residents with aspirations of the city's future directions.
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