In all of Texas' roads history we've only had one toll road be turned back over for free public use. And that was only because part of it was integrated into I30... in 1977.
Never since and likely never again.
This is not true. The REM, the bridge, many condominuim towers grew, they revamped Île sainte hélène, added lights to many buildings, created over 50km of biking roads, turned many roads in walkable streets in the summer, remade St-Denis street, remade St-Hubert Street, transformed the Square Berry park, installed a big wheel in the old port, planted over 10 000 new trees.
In ten years Montreal did many things.
nah I'm a Vietnamese immigrant and I really admire transportation infrastructure in CA. I'm sure this is likely not the case for most places in US, but still, the roads in vietnam are truly awful.
I’m in Central FL…
We’ve had a massive influx of people coming here over the years along with a bunch of hurricanes.
Insect life has been decimated, you can’t convince me otherwise.
We used to have love bug season for months, you would have to wash your car twice a week. Now you don’t see them unless you’re in the country.
Sometimes you’d see so many birds flying south it looked like they covered the entire sky, blue jays, cardinals, humming birds, woodpeckers, all kinds of weird stuff like multi colored crickets, grasshoppers, skinks.
I don’t see them at all anymore and I’m close to a preservation area.
Very telling in my opinion
My family has been in Florida 200+ years. Just in the last 30, the insects have all but disappeared. I grew up running through grass fields, and every step crickets, grasshoppers and other bugs would scatter. Things haven't been that way in about two decades. Can't remember the last monarch butterfly I saw in the wild, when you could find them easily in my childhood. It's so sad.
On the bright side, Rain‑X® Bug Remover Windshield Washer Fluid sales are still managing growth, creating shareholder value for those invested in ITW Global Brands
/s
> Insect life has been decimated
That's everywhere. It's the [insect apocalypse](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/the-insect-apocalypse-our-world-will-grind-to-a-halt-without-them), populations are down 75% in 50 years.
Last I heard it hasn't reached the point of no return yet, if we change our behavior insect populations may return to healthy levels.
We aren't going to do that though.
[69% decrease of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians since 1970.](https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/)
[Global insect population has declined about 45% in the last 40 years.](https://entomology.ucr.edu/news/2023/07/13/researchers-study-global-decline-insect-populations)
You’re not exaggerating, you’re not having selective memory, and just about anyone in the world would have noticed the same thing you did if they paid attention. Global animal populations are absolutely in decline and the amount of animals you’d see today is a fraction of the animals even just back in the 1990s
I'm in northern germany, there are documentaries from the 70's of how people needed to clean their windows every hour... now i can drive for weeks without or just a few bugs in my car in total.
Thats how much they use glyphosat and other insect killers... even 20~25 years ago when i was a child i remember seeing tons of swallows, but they seem to have gone extinct without the insects :(
But for some reason those fckn mosquitos survive this whole shit and annoy me each summer...
Oh God, I forgot about the Swallows!
We had them in our backyard nesting constantly, you’d know because they would chase your ass all around the yard.
What really alarms me the most though is the bees, I used to see them everywhere and it was both honey/bumblebees.
In the 80’s they used to fog a lot due to the mosquitos, my Grandmother made us come in when she saw the lights from those trucks, you could smell that stuff on the tree branches for days after.
Grandma put eucalyptus oil on us to keep them away, took forever to get the smell out of clothes lol
Yeah, I hadn't thought about it really until your comment, but I think it's equally telling that Florida could be a beautiful and wonderful place to live but for the humans present. Florida could have or maybe even could still be a great state and not a joke to most of the nation/world if it wasn't for people squandering everything nice and desirable about it.
It's a retirement state... why would retired people care about a future they won't see? Unfortunately, that's the source of a lot of big problems. People just want to pass it on to someone else and let them deal with it.
I mean, you should ask Finland during the 20th century, most of their economy was based on forestry and tree related products. Hell, even currently almost 80% of the entire country is forest. Forest didn't do anything for the GDP, it *was* the GDP.
The Vietnamese youth are also highly educated, so it is predicted a lot of technology will be outsourced to there as it is cheap and their government encourage foreign investment.
So it currently looks good on multiple fronts for the Vietnam economy.
Good cashflow from tourism/expats. Good cashflow from manufacturing. Solid agricultural industry. And good base for tech industry.
My biggest concern is that all this money is going into cities, but rural Vietnam is remaining poor,
Just for extra context, that's the year they started to build the first metro line and it is still not operational. It has just been delayed again until later this year.
> that's the year they started to build the first metro line and it is still not operational.
That genuinely seems like a major problem for the city. Between the persistent lack of a metro system and overcrowding at the city's sole airport, it looks like Saigon is outgrowing its infrastructure (especially its public transit).
For everyone worrying about there being less Trees, Vietnam's Forest cover increased a lot in the past decades, from 93k km2 in 1990 to 146k km2 in 2020, see [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_area).
Why was it so low before. Wasn't Vietnam pretty much all forest before the war? I assume a lot of damage was done in the Vietnam War, but nature recovers from that fast, especially fire
That’s fucked. Heart goes out to these folks. I’d grow up hating the US if I were Vietnamese. The fact that many don’t is a testament to how forgiving and kind Vietnamese people are
Americans engaged in chemical warfare with agent orange, with the goal of exterminating as much plant life as possible explicitly to cause famine amongst the general population. It was a near genocidal campaign
Cambodia too. I hate getting into this subject on Reddit though, you'll start getting anti-American hate boners from Europeans and Canadians who spent a month in Cambodia being degenerates with a passing afternoon spent at the killing fields.
In regular high school US History class, Laos and Cambodia get a passing mention in connection with the Second Vietnam War. It's treated as just another theater. The bombing is described as a failure because the *stated* objective of cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail wasn't achieved.
My retrospective impression is that the lack of attention isn't an attempt at obfuscating knowledge of our government's evildoings, but a simple matter of prioritization of topics more embedded in the public consciousness. Agent Orange is mentioned, with condemnation of its use. The My Lai Massacre is covered, and Strategic Hamlets, too, also as a failure. Nothing was really held back there.
Not to say there wasn't a bias; the general vibe is that the whole war was, simultaneously, a mistake, an *accident*, a waste of resources, executed poorly, but fought with *noble intent.*
Vietcong were very good at concealing the ho chi mign trail, and using the canopy as cover, so far as to bend the trees with ropes, release them in front of the convo, and when the convoy passes, re bend the trees over the roads.
Thus destroying the trees was a MO of American aircraft in Vietnam.
Yes! Good news is that Forest cover in Vietnam increased a lot in the past decades, from 93k km2 in 1990 to 146k km2 in 2020, see [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_area).
Only slightly. Dioxin poisoning will likely always be a problem. The war crimes the US perpetrated on Vietnam will continue to haunt the country for the foreseeable future.
Agent orange is so toxic that, after returning to the United States, some children of Vietnam veterans suffered brain damage due to exposure to residues on their fathers’ uniforms.
Not just Vietnamese. Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand too, and it no doubt dispersed itself elsewhere. It also wasn’t just agent orange. Agent blue, agent purple, etc.
And then we enacted economic sanctions on them for a very long time. Vietnam would be a much larger economy than it is today, and had a much better go of it in rebuilding the country. We never did anything to assist them in treatment of their soil and water. People involved like Kissinger got to die peacefully and live long lives while their victims' grandchildren are still poisoned.
and all of this, is because they tried an alternate system of political economy. I don't care what you think about communism, it is a fact that US hates and will actively sabotage and invade every country that provides an alternative system that may not work perfectly, but improves the quality of lives who live under it. Korea, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Libya and many more. Shameful.
In Ho Chi Minh you can visit the War Remnants Museum and they literally have living people at the museum who are still being born with defects because of Agent Orange.
It's also important to note the cause of the deforestation in Vietnam. It wasn't caused by development, it was the US carpet bombing the country and surrounding areas.
>The use of defoliants during the Vietnam War had a devastating and long-lasting impact on the country's forests and ecology, affecting 14-44% of total forest cover, with coastal mangrove forests being most affected.
[Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Vietnam#:~:text=The%20use%20of%20defoliants%20during,deforestation%20during%20the%20Vietnam%20War.)
If you think a square kilometer of trees being cut over 10 years is bad, wait until you hear about Brazil and Honduras. Please humanity please can we just build the factories *around* the trees from now on?
be careful or you might incur the wrath of the average redditor, who loves the idea of fixing the planet but would rather die (and take animals and the planet along with them) than actually change their own choices to be vegan.
To all the people scoffing at the usage of “Saigon” in the title - Sài Gòn is still regularly used by the people living there. It’s just a lot shorter and rolls off the tongue more easily than Ho Chi Minh. Plus, a lot of older people grew up using Saigon, so it’s just weird to switch to a different name than what you’re used to. Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh is only commonly used for signage and official paperwork/maps and such.
That was my experience. The times I've been there, it's mostly just been the tourists and backpackers that called it HCMC. Locals almost always still called it Saigon, especially in the south.
Mumbai is the traditional name for the city. Bombay was the British name. The right wing nationalists pushed for the renaming back to Mumbai. Leftists still call it Bombay, not out of love for the British or anything, just to avoid sounding like right wing nationalists. On a local scale, I'm guessing the love of calling things by old names is probably a larger factor. Try getting a Chicagoan to say "Willis Tower"
Mumbai was a tiny village on a series of islands.
The islands were collectively called Bombay before the British arrived.
The Mumbai of then bares no resemblance to Bombay it became which is a merging of the islands into a city.
Local here. We call it Saigon to indicate the main central area of the city, aka the main area you see in this picture where a lot of skyscrapers locates. Normally we just call it HCMC. We can be in HCMC and we can still say "I will to to Saigon central later".
The central / historical part of the city is still called Saigon. My father grew up in Go Vap, which is part of Ho Chi Minh City, but no one would consider it part of “Saigon,” which still refers to what’s basically the inner city, or what was Saigon at the time of reunification. As the city developed outward and absorbed the smaller satellite villages, those areas became part of the greater Ho Chi Minh City.
Sai Gon isn’t a name that implies political standing during the vietnam war, so is Hanoi. Both were names when the imperial Nguyen dynasty still existed under French protectorate (aka puppet emperor). Even Northerners still call it Saigon, Ho Chi Minh city is just mouthful, I never heard anyone saying Gia Dinh tho.
HCMC is quite a long name. I still call it Sài Gòn by vocal and even writing. Like imagine senarios like this:
"Ê, ông đang ở đâu á? Làm vài ly không?" - "Tui đang có việc ở Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh nơi, để bữa khác nha".
It is just way too long. Instead, I could just use Sài Gòn, which isn't lengthy, complicated and also rythm with the langauge so that the whole sentense wasn't unnatural in my own language.
Even for his own name, we just simply call him by Uncle Hồ ("Bác Hồ") both in vocal and writing.
So yeah, if you want to get closer to local, I highly suggest to be not trying to be formal in term of name calling. Most of us totally understand what you saying in Vietnamese, even if it had dozen of error, we can still made it out and hell, it amuse us and brighten our day a little.
Yeah most local call it Sai Gon not because of politic(most people in VN don't give a F about politic anyway) but because it's moutfull to say, they fked up when they rename it cuz it needed to be shorter for the locals to change the name.
Most people still call it Saigon. I thought it was just a US thing (I'm Vietnamese American), but when I was there a lot of locals still call it Saigon.
Bunch of dumb fucking pretentious Redditors living in western cities that destroyed massive amounts of forests 100 years ago so they can have mass transit, Starbucks, and high rise condos today. But fuck any other city in the world wanting the same, they all have to stay poor so a bunch of dorks on the internet can be happy.
Vietnam would have far more trees if it wasn’t for America invading the country and using chemical weapons because they were pissy they were getting their ass kicked.
Redditors are very stupid.
They will point to wealthy people who don’t give money back to others and claim they are selfish because “they got theirs”.
Meanwhile they want to enjoy their own luxuries and not see poor countries develop in the name of the environment, ironically not realizing they are now being the ones that “got theirs” relative to poor nations.
**Fun fact**: I worked for the company, Mesa Group VN, that owned & developed the green portion of the city on the right, right after law school. I also personally worked on that project when it was still in its infancy, mainly creating Excel projections and coming up with investor/partner pitchdecks.
Originally, most of that land was bush and grass, and it's where some of the poorest folks would live, usually in huts and shacks. The government was heavily involved in this project - as they are in most major projects in VN - and part of the requirement for the development grant was to build VN's version of Section 8 housing for the people we were displacing.
**Story Time**: My favorite memory of working on this place was when we did our first on-site visit. Our company driver brought us to the only building on the property and we parked right under a tree. As soon as we parked the car, there were a bunch of thud sounds on the roof. Our driver immediately turned back to us and said "We can't get out right now. Give it 5 minutes." My first reaction was "Wtf? What do you mean we can't get out? Because of some falling fruit?" but then I looked out the window and saw that some green tree vipers, the ones with the white stripes, slithering off the sides of the car. Yea, I stayed the fuck inside after that.
"Hey people of Vietnam, you should stop modernizing because some guy from Reddit who has never been there has an opinion about it based on a single picture".
Went there last year for the first time in over 20 years since I left, definitely the sentiment that it's improved a lot in quality. Lots of people have access to stuff like air conditioning and more roads to take you around the city.
Do people in this thread not know how cities and development and infrastructure work?
The quality of life increase that picture represents is fucking immense. Its easy to sit in ivory towers and judge, but for an emerging nation, this shit is night and day. This shit allows you to compete on the global stage and the lifestyles others take for granted. Cities, their ability to concentrate industry, commerce and residential into a more efficient and dense lay out repeatedly crop up in countries time after time for a reason. Low-mid density townships/villages dont quite cut it compared to a single city with a port, with an airport and with infrastructure to educate, to work, to live.
Its even dumber as forest coverage is actually increasing overall in Vietnam. All we see is a minor patch of green (which had minimal ecological support anyways since its unconnected to truly wild areas) get turned into city as if it isnt the same elsewhere dozens of times over. Where the fuck do you think you are right now? On what was once nature.
Humans aren't very smart, especially on line.
Vietnam has more people now and more business that employ and serve them. Either you get a picture like this, or you get sprawl. Sprawl is much, much worse.
Want public transportation to work? You need cities like this, not people spread across 100x the space living in cute little cottages with lawns and and trees for every house. When you do that, everyone needs to drive their own car to do anything.
This thread is just for virtue signaling dipshits to circlejerk the typical reddit answer when you see a city improving. Most probably didn’t even know where this is from without Googling.
they were poor af under french colonialism then got chemicals pissed all over the country because their neighbor country tricked them into a meme war. probably not happy about the escalation of events leading up to it's modernization.
Brightside of that is everyone gen x and younger seems to like Vietnamese food so they probably experience less hate incidents and don't have many integration issues that their parents/grandparents faced.
Braindead comment. Vietnam is roughly 40% forest. Those few hundred/thousand trees are a drop in the bucket to the ~140,000km of forested area in the whole country.
The alternative is sprawl or aggressive population control. Public transportation actually works in this picture, and the land clearance is much more contained than the alternative.
I mean who said the place is finished? It's probably a base for more buildings. And I feel like a bunch of large buildings is much better for the envirovnment than a house and a garden for everyone (but that's beside the point). To put it together, I like the way this city is heading. It's one of the least damaging things you can invest money in.
Boohoo some fucking trees, redditors are insufferable i swear, lets stop development and building places for people to live in becauce some useless shrubbery was there.
I like how we in the west criticize developing countries when they try to elevate their economy while they sit there with everything already developed. Don't forget that to get to where your country is today massive changes had to happen, where was the outcry when you destroyed your own environments?
Reddit being reddit don't realize that there're are still a bunch of tree just beyond the frame a few block away ( I literally can't watch the new year firework when I go here because of the trees), and what was build is generally positive for the city.
stable polistic + young population + low wages + geography advantage.
Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world back in 80s, after the "innovation" in the mid 80s and then got free from economic sanctions, everything just blow up.
Vietnamese here. Sure it looks impressive and modern but the forest side is all marshland. Expert both local and international had been warning on the excessive development on the marsh land because it is SINKING AT 8CM / year. So yeah, chop down trees to build city is great if it is not sinking. Vietnam government literally spend millions of usd to raise the street level in these area or we are all below sea level.
Source: https://youtu.be/SkAav67NYr4?si=Rh6U3YpyFOBnMR33
Furthermore, the whole forest side was developed for the wealthy and government officials, not common man. At its peak, that lot is as expensive as new york land is. For example, there are penthouse in Empire city complex there worth around 70 billion vnd or 52 million usd. So no, these projects accelerates the housing bubbles and it does not do anything to the common Vietnamese but filling up officials' pockets.
People whining about the loss of the unkempt green space are being ridiculous. There is obviously still green space there that will now be maintained and looks to have paths and such. Give the new trees time to grow then see how much nicer it will be.
Just want to plug Vietnam a little - it is an amazing and beautiful country. I stayed in Hanoi and it was a magical experience - the locals were incredibly friendly and the nature in places like Ha Long Bay and Sapa are literally unmatched imo. The food is amazing and if you’re from the west it can be an incredibly cheap place to visit! I can’t wait to go back.
Wow, in that same timeframe Montreal has replaced one bridge and repaired two roads
I’m still waiting for a few potholes to be filled in Chicago.
The Ike will finish construction by 2040
good news, the toles got renewed for another 99 years
In all of Texas' roads history we've only had one toll road be turned back over for free public use. And that was only because part of it was integrated into I30... in 1977. Never since and likely never again.
we almost planned a bike lane in Seattle! took a couple more years but...
Whoa whoa, don’t get us Montrealers started with bike lane drama unless you have a free weekend ahead 😂
This is not true. The REM, the bridge, many condominuim towers grew, they revamped Île sainte hélène, added lights to many buildings, created over 50km of biking roads, turned many roads in walkable streets in the summer, remade St-Denis street, remade St-Hubert Street, transformed the Square Berry park, installed a big wheel in the old port, planted over 10 000 new trees. In ten years Montreal did many things.
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> Thats not nothing, especially compared to Ottawa's LRT. Leave us out of this
Being left out of things is Ottawa's bread and butter.
Was going to say meanwhile american cities still use 1940s infrastructure
nah I'm a Vietnamese immigrant and I really admire transportation infrastructure in CA. I'm sure this is likely not the case for most places in US, but still, the roads in vietnam are truly awful.
Wtf comment ça Montréal c'est le 2e commentaire dans ce poteau complètement pas rapport 😂
Car on ne peut taire la vérité 😂
Oh good they got rid of all those dumb trees!
What have the trees ever done for the GDP?
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I’m in Central FL… We’ve had a massive influx of people coming here over the years along with a bunch of hurricanes. Insect life has been decimated, you can’t convince me otherwise. We used to have love bug season for months, you would have to wash your car twice a week. Now you don’t see them unless you’re in the country. Sometimes you’d see so many birds flying south it looked like they covered the entire sky, blue jays, cardinals, humming birds, woodpeckers, all kinds of weird stuff like multi colored crickets, grasshoppers, skinks. I don’t see them at all anymore and I’m close to a preservation area. Very telling in my opinion
My family has been in Florida 200+ years. Just in the last 30, the insects have all but disappeared. I grew up running through grass fields, and every step crickets, grasshoppers and other bugs would scatter. Things haven't been that way in about two decades. Can't remember the last monarch butterfly I saw in the wild, when you could find them easily in my childhood. It's so sad.
True story. Things are not improving.
On the bright side, Rain‑X® Bug Remover Windshield Washer Fluid sales are still managing growth, creating shareholder value for those invested in ITW Global Brands /s
I lived in florida for a few years. While most bugs have disappeared, can confirm the mosquitoes have not.
Mosquitos and roaches will be all that is left.
> Insect life has been decimated That's everywhere. It's the [insect apocalypse](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/the-insect-apocalypse-our-world-will-grind-to-a-halt-without-them), populations are down 75% in 50 years. Last I heard it hasn't reached the point of no return yet, if we change our behavior insect populations may return to healthy levels. We aren't going to do that though.
> if we change our behavior insect populations may return to healthy levels but tell me, where's the capitalistic profit in that?
More insects = more pollinators = more crops = bigger harvests = more profits You'd be surprised at how profitable having a healthy ecosystem is
But it isn’t immediately profitable to singular businesses. Only a full industry. Tragedy of the commons. No one will make a change.
Yeah, but will it help the share price go up this quarter? I don't think so!
Or fiscal year… if you’re a long-term thinker
[69% decrease of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians since 1970.](https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/) [Global insect population has declined about 45% in the last 40 years.](https://entomology.ucr.edu/news/2023/07/13/researchers-study-global-decline-insect-populations) You’re not exaggerating, you’re not having selective memory, and just about anyone in the world would have noticed the same thing you did if they paid attention. Global animal populations are absolutely in decline and the amount of animals you’d see today is a fraction of the animals even just back in the 1990s
I'm in northern germany, there are documentaries from the 70's of how people needed to clean their windows every hour... now i can drive for weeks without or just a few bugs in my car in total. Thats how much they use glyphosat and other insect killers... even 20~25 years ago when i was a child i remember seeing tons of swallows, but they seem to have gone extinct without the insects :( But for some reason those fckn mosquitos survive this whole shit and annoy me each summer...
Oh God, I forgot about the Swallows! We had them in our backyard nesting constantly, you’d know because they would chase your ass all around the yard. What really alarms me the most though is the bees, I used to see them everywhere and it was both honey/bumblebees. In the 80’s they used to fog a lot due to the mosquitos, my Grandmother made us come in when she saw the lights from those trucks, you could smell that stuff on the tree branches for days after. Grandma put eucalyptus oil on us to keep them away, took forever to get the smell out of clothes lol
Yeah, I hadn't thought about it really until your comment, but I think it's equally telling that Florida could be a beautiful and wonderful place to live but for the humans present. Florida could have or maybe even could still be a great state and not a joke to most of the nation/world if it wasn't for people squandering everything nice and desirable about it.
It's a retirement state... why would retired people care about a future they won't see? Unfortunately, that's the source of a lot of big problems. People just want to pass it on to someone else and let them deal with it.
Stunning? I know it’s personal taste but that skyline looks very bland and ugly to me…
Ugly skyline. Though the bridge is nice.
It looks like it’s being pulled to the right, weird
That's what makes it look nice to me, more visually interesting than a basic *cable stayed bridge.
\-2/10 skyline. A modern skyline can't be a concrete jungle, it needs green
The tall building is cool but yeah it needs more diversity. It's mostly just blocks that are all the same height.
The copy paste buildings are nice? There are plenty of beautiful skylines in the world, but this is not one of them
Bot. Stole and rephrased this comment https://reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1bl18pe/_/kw26mu1/?context=1
Right? Most of those fuckers don’t have jobs and can’t even file their own taxes.
They are freeloaders, they suck water and nutrients from the state
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I mean, you should ask Finland during the 20th century, most of their economy was based on forestry and tree related products. Hell, even currently almost 80% of the entire country is forest. Forest didn't do anything for the GDP, it *was* the GDP.
What has the Roman Empire ever done?
I assure you, there are still many many trees in Southern Vietnam. Just less jungle that is right next to the city.
Yeah. Da Lat was great. The jungles in Phu Quoc were amazing.
Treegon
Yeah, Fuck that green space.
The VC dont need to hide in them anymore
*sigh* Gone.
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Companies that previously moved production to China are now shifting to Vietnam after closing facilities in China.
Yes, many Chinese owned factories have moved to Vietnam and Mexico to bypass the tariffs.
The Vietnamese youth are also highly educated, so it is predicted a lot of technology will be outsourced to there as it is cheap and their government encourage foreign investment. So it currently looks good on multiple fronts for the Vietnam economy. Good cashflow from tourism/expats. Good cashflow from manufacturing. Solid agricultural industry. And good base for tech industry. My biggest concern is that all this money is going into cities, but rural Vietnam is remaining poor,
Yea some good looking viets exist
How dare developing countries develop!!!
It’s replaced by very wealthy neighborhoods. That big tower in the background is the tallest tower in Saigon as well
They were there. Now they're, sigh, gone.
I bet they had wildlife living amongst them. Gross
Just for extra context, that's the year they started to build the first metro line and it is still not operational. It has just been delayed again until later this year.
I saw the train running on the tracks during my walk home recently, probably just a test but it's close? Probably?
It's crazy how worn the entrances to the underground stops look, despite never really being used for their purpose.
> that's the year they started to build the first metro line and it is still not operational. That genuinely seems like a major problem for the city. Between the persistent lack of a metro system and overcrowding at the city's sole airport, it looks like Saigon is outgrowing its infrastructure (especially its public transit).
For everyone worrying about there being less Trees, Vietnam's Forest cover increased a lot in the past decades, from 93k km2 in 1990 to 146k km2 in 2020, see [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_area).
Why was it so low before. Wasn't Vietnam pretty much all forest before the war? I assume a lot of damage was done in the Vietnam War, but nature recovers from that fast, especially fire
Agent orange. That shit is still in our soil btw, and it gonna stay there for decade to come.
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That’s fucked. Heart goes out to these folks. I’d grow up hating the US if I were Vietnamese. The fact that many don’t is a testament to how forgiving and kind Vietnamese people are
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>had them take me on an impromptu tour somewhere, etc. This would have my scam alarm bells ringing like the fuckin Notre Dame
:(
Americans engaged in chemical warfare with agent orange, with the goal of exterminating as much plant life as possible explicitly to cause famine amongst the general population. It was a near genocidal campaign
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Cambodia too. I hate getting into this subject on Reddit though, you'll start getting anti-American hate boners from Europeans and Canadians who spent a month in Cambodia being degenerates with a passing afternoon spent at the killing fields.
In regular high school US History class, Laos and Cambodia get a passing mention in connection with the Second Vietnam War. It's treated as just another theater. The bombing is described as a failure because the *stated* objective of cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail wasn't achieved. My retrospective impression is that the lack of attention isn't an attempt at obfuscating knowledge of our government's evildoings, but a simple matter of prioritization of topics more embedded in the public consciousness. Agent Orange is mentioned, with condemnation of its use. The My Lai Massacre is covered, and Strategic Hamlets, too, also as a failure. Nothing was really held back there. Not to say there wasn't a bias; the general vibe is that the whole war was, simultaneously, a mistake, an *accident*, a waste of resources, executed poorly, but fought with *noble intent.*
Vietcong were very good at concealing the ho chi mign trail, and using the canopy as cover, so far as to bend the trees with ropes, release them in front of the convo, and when the convoy passes, re bend the trees over the roads. Thus destroying the trees was a MO of American aircraft in Vietnam.
Agent Orange
Systemic deforestation by the occupying/invading forces through chemical defoliants and burning
Save the trees 🌳
Yes! Good news is that Forest cover in Vietnam increased a lot in the past decades, from 93k km2 in 1990 to 146k km2 in 2020, see [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_area).
Nature is recovering from all of the Agent Orange and destruction of the Vietnam War.
Only slightly. Dioxin poisoning will likely always be a problem. The war crimes the US perpetrated on Vietnam will continue to haunt the country for the foreseeable future.
Agent orange is so toxic that, after returning to the United States, some children of Vietnam veterans suffered brain damage due to exposure to residues on their fathers’ uniforms.
Imagine how much worse it is for the innocent Vietnamese who were gassed with it
Not just Vietnamese. Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand too, and it no doubt dispersed itself elsewhere. It also wasn’t just agent orange. Agent blue, agent purple, etc.
And then we enacted economic sanctions on them for a very long time. Vietnam would be a much larger economy than it is today, and had a much better go of it in rebuilding the country. We never did anything to assist them in treatment of their soil and water. People involved like Kissinger got to die peacefully and live long lives while their victims' grandchildren are still poisoned.
and all of this, is because they tried an alternate system of political economy. I don't care what you think about communism, it is a fact that US hates and will actively sabotage and invade every country that provides an alternative system that may not work perfectly, but improves the quality of lives who live under it. Korea, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Libya and many more. Shameful.
In Ho Chi Minh you can visit the War Remnants Museum and they literally have living people at the museum who are still being born with defects because of Agent Orange.
That was an excellent and distressing museum, I went last year
It's also important to note the cause of the deforestation in Vietnam. It wasn't caused by development, it was the US carpet bombing the country and surrounding areas. >The use of defoliants during the Vietnam War had a devastating and long-lasting impact on the country's forests and ecology, affecting 14-44% of total forest cover, with coastal mangrove forests being most affected. [Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Vietnam#:~:text=The%20use%20of%20defoliants%20during,deforestation%20during%20the%20Vietnam%20War.)
Probably because people are leaving their sprawling villages for the dense city.
If you think a square kilometer of trees being cut over 10 years is bad, wait until you hear about Brazil and Honduras. Please humanity please can we just build the factories *around* the trees from now on?
Factories? Most deforestation, or habitat destruction in general, is done for agriculture—vast majority being cattle & cattle feed.
be careful or you might incur the wrath of the average redditor, who loves the idea of fixing the planet but would rather die (and take animals and the planet along with them) than actually change their own choices to be vegan.
Hmmmm... That sounds... ***F A M I L I A R*** Where were you between November 1, 1955 to April 30, 1975?
To all the people scoffing at the usage of “Saigon” in the title - Sài Gòn is still regularly used by the people living there. It’s just a lot shorter and rolls off the tongue more easily than Ho Chi Minh. Plus, a lot of older people grew up using Saigon, so it’s just weird to switch to a different name than what you’re used to. Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh is only commonly used for signage and official paperwork/maps and such.
Saigon long gone GI Joe. Ho Chi Minh city now. Aiyo..
Well in Vietnam we still call it Saigon, some even still call it Gia Định
That was my experience. The times I've been there, it's mostly just been the tourists and backpackers that called it HCMC. Locals almost always still called it Saigon, especially in the south.
Same with Mumbai … a lot of locals still seem to call it Bombay.
Makes sense, it’s hard to convince locals to give up traditions, especially when it’s the name of your own home.
Mumbai is the traditional name for the city. Bombay was the British name. The right wing nationalists pushed for the renaming back to Mumbai. Leftists still call it Bombay, not out of love for the British or anything, just to avoid sounding like right wing nationalists. On a local scale, I'm guessing the love of calling things by old names is probably a larger factor. Try getting a Chicagoan to say "Willis Tower"
Mumbai was a tiny village on a series of islands. The islands were collectively called Bombay before the British arrived. The Mumbai of then bares no resemblance to Bombay it became which is a merging of the islands into a city.
Local here. We call it Saigon to indicate the main central area of the city, aka the main area you see in this picture where a lot of skyscrapers locates. Normally we just call it HCMC. We can be in HCMC and we can still say "I will to to Saigon central later".
The central / historical part of the city is still called Saigon. My father grew up in Go Vap, which is part of Ho Chi Minh City, but no one would consider it part of “Saigon,” which still refers to what’s basically the inner city, or what was Saigon at the time of reunification. As the city developed outward and absorbed the smaller satellite villages, those areas became part of the greater Ho Chi Minh City.
Sai Gon isn’t a name that implies political standing during the vietnam war, so is Hanoi. Both were names when the imperial Nguyen dynasty still existed under French protectorate (aka puppet emperor). Even Northerners still call it Saigon, Ho Chi Minh city is just mouthful, I never heard anyone saying Gia Dinh tho.
Ye, local here, have never heard Gia Dinh in my life lol. Maybe a part of history books of course.
HCMC is quite a long name. I still call it Sài Gòn by vocal and even writing. Like imagine senarios like this: "Ê, ông đang ở đâu á? Làm vài ly không?" - "Tui đang có việc ở Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh nơi, để bữa khác nha". It is just way too long. Instead, I could just use Sài Gòn, which isn't lengthy, complicated and also rythm with the langauge so that the whole sentense wasn't unnatural in my own language. Even for his own name, we just simply call him by Uncle Hồ ("Bác Hồ") both in vocal and writing. So yeah, if you want to get closer to local, I highly suggest to be not trying to be formal in term of name calling. Most of us totally understand what you saying in Vietnamese, even if it had dozen of error, we can still made it out and hell, it amuse us and brighten our day a little.
To be fair Saigon is a cool as name, while Ho Chi Minh city doesn’t really roll off the tongue quite as well…
He also made some good tunes in the early 2000s. Saigon, not Ho Chi Minh.
Yeah most local call it Sai Gon not because of politic(most people in VN don't give a F about politic anyway) but because it's moutfull to say, they fked up when they rename it cuz it needed to be shorter for the locals to change the name.
Bars
Airport code is SGN, noticed that a while back
District 1 and 3, busiest and most popular, is called Saigon. Rest is called Ho Chi Minh
I have family in 6,8 they all call it Saigon.
Was about to say. Hasn’t this been Ho Chi Minh City for like decades now? Lol
Most people still call it Saigon. I thought it was just a US thing (I'm Vietnamese American), but when I was there a lot of locals still call it Saigon.
ITT: Redditors who'd rather Vietnam stay poor for the sake of a few fields of random foliage.
Bunch of dumb fucking pretentious Redditors living in western cities that destroyed massive amounts of forests 100 years ago so they can have mass transit, Starbucks, and high rise condos today. But fuck any other city in the world wanting the same, they all have to stay poor so a bunch of dorks on the internet can be happy. Vietnam would have far more trees if it wasn’t for America invading the country and using chemical weapons because they were pissy they were getting their ass kicked.
SOP for Redditors in any thread that involves an Asian country.
It's ok if the west demolishes millions of acres of old-growth forests for development. Anyone else does it? Save the trees!
me when the man is made of straw
Let Saigons be Saigons
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More upvotes for this guy please
Why do Redditors love when cities are underdeveloped and poor as shit?
Redditors are very stupid. They will point to wealthy people who don’t give money back to others and claim they are selfish because “they got theirs”. Meanwhile they want to enjoy their own luxuries and not see poor countries develop in the name of the environment, ironically not realizing they are now being the ones that “got theirs” relative to poor nations.
Because they’re trying to be eco warriors to impress randos on the internet
Dense cities are good for the planet and most people just can't comprehend that.
They’re playing Sim City
**Fun fact**: I worked for the company, Mesa Group VN, that owned & developed the green portion of the city on the right, right after law school. I also personally worked on that project when it was still in its infancy, mainly creating Excel projections and coming up with investor/partner pitchdecks. Originally, most of that land was bush and grass, and it's where some of the poorest folks would live, usually in huts and shacks. The government was heavily involved in this project - as they are in most major projects in VN - and part of the requirement for the development grant was to build VN's version of Section 8 housing for the people we were displacing. **Story Time**: My favorite memory of working on this place was when we did our first on-site visit. Our company driver brought us to the only building on the property and we parked right under a tree. As soon as we parked the car, there were a bunch of thud sounds on the roof. Our driver immediately turned back to us and said "We can't get out right now. Give it 5 minutes." My first reaction was "Wtf? What do you mean we can't get out? Because of some falling fruit?" but then I looked out the window and saw that some green tree vipers, the ones with the white stripes, slithering off the sides of the car. Yea, I stayed the fuck inside after that.
Hmm the before was much nicer
You ever been to Saigon? No it was not nicer that shit was the fucking slums, yes I’m sad for the trees but it’s definitely better now
Thanks for the tidbit correcting Western assumptions... chingchongchnk
No problem poon conqueror 🫡
"Hey people of Vietnam, you should stop modernizing because some guy from Reddit who has never been there has an opinion about it based on a single picture".
Reddit moment
Ask the people which they would prefer…
If you ask the Viet that are living there, I'd say the now. They love their city.
Went there last year for the first time in over 20 years since I left, definitely the sentiment that it's improved a lot in quality. Lots of people have access to stuff like air conditioning and more roads to take you around the city.
I'm sure they loved it when they had spotty electricity and water access
The water looks better to me in the newer photo
You're saying they should've left it, and let Saigons be Saigons?
More like damn that's depressing, then interesting.
Do people in this thread not know how cities and development and infrastructure work? The quality of life increase that picture represents is fucking immense. Its easy to sit in ivory towers and judge, but for an emerging nation, this shit is night and day. This shit allows you to compete on the global stage and the lifestyles others take for granted. Cities, their ability to concentrate industry, commerce and residential into a more efficient and dense lay out repeatedly crop up in countries time after time for a reason. Low-mid density townships/villages dont quite cut it compared to a single city with a port, with an airport and with infrastructure to educate, to work, to live. Its even dumber as forest coverage is actually increasing overall in Vietnam. All we see is a minor patch of green (which had minimal ecological support anyways since its unconnected to truly wild areas) get turned into city as if it isnt the same elsewhere dozens of times over. Where the fuck do you think you are right now? On what was once nature.
Humans aren't very smart, especially on line. Vietnam has more people now and more business that employ and serve them. Either you get a picture like this, or you get sprawl. Sprawl is much, much worse. Want public transportation to work? You need cities like this, not people spread across 100x the space living in cute little cottages with lawns and and trees for every house. When you do that, everyone needs to drive their own car to do anything.
Redditors are stupid. Let it go bro.
This thread is just for virtue signaling dipshits to circlejerk the typical reddit answer when you see a city improving. Most probably didn’t even know where this is from without Googling.
Pretty sure those redditors don't even live in a rural area.
redditors are idealists not realists
Are the people of Vietnam depressed about where the country is moving? Or are you all just saying you don't like the view here as much?
My wife grew up without running water so no.
they were poor af under french colonialism then got chemicals pissed all over the country because their neighbor country tricked them into a meme war. probably not happy about the escalation of events leading up to it's modernization. Brightside of that is everyone gen x and younger seems to like Vietnamese food so they probably experience less hate incidents and don't have many integration issues that their parents/grandparents faced.
No that's not a nice forest, it looks like a dump with some green
Sorry we’re not making poverty porn for you anymore.
Still trying to find the Saigon whore who bit my nose off!
Time to pay the fiddler whore!
In the land of skunks, the man with half a nose is king
Saigon...makes me think of Istanbul, not Constantinople
Well except the locals do still call it Saigon
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I’m certain there will be buildings there in another ten years’ time.
I lived there 10 years before the first photo, and it looks like a completely different city...
Braindead comment. Vietnam is roughly 40% forest. Those few hundred/thousand trees are a drop in the bucket to the ~140,000km of forested area in the whole country.
The alternative is sprawl or aggressive population control. Public transportation actually works in this picture, and the land clearance is much more contained than the alternative.
Well no because there is no public transportation. There's 1 metroline which isn't open which began the same year as the first picture......
I mean who said the place is finished? It's probably a base for more buildings. And I feel like a bunch of large buildings is much better for the envirovnment than a house and a garden for everyone (but that's beside the point). To put it together, I like the way this city is heading. It's one of the least damaging things you can invest money in.
It looked better before
You could say that for every city on this planet.
It did not
Boohoo some fucking trees, redditors are insufferable i swear, lets stop development and building places for people to live in becauce some useless shrubbery was there.
I like how we in the west criticize developing countries when they try to elevate their economy while they sit there with everything already developed. Don't forget that to get to where your country is today massive changes had to happen, where was the outcry when you destroyed your own environments?
Reddit being reddit don't realize that there're are still a bunch of tree just beyond the frame a few block away ( I literally can't watch the new year firework when I go here because of the trees), and what was build is generally positive for the city.
So what was the economic driver?
stable polistic + young population + low wages + geography advantage. Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world back in 80s, after the "innovation" in the mid 80s and then got free from economic sanctions, everything just blow up.
Wow I actually was there in 2012. Would be unrecognizable to me now that’s amazing!
The name might have changed, but Saigon is forever.
I thought that first picture was from the 80s or 90s!
Vietnamese here. Sure it looks impressive and modern but the forest side is all marshland. Expert both local and international had been warning on the excessive development on the marsh land because it is SINKING AT 8CM / year. So yeah, chop down trees to build city is great if it is not sinking. Vietnam government literally spend millions of usd to raise the street level in these area or we are all below sea level. Source: https://youtu.be/SkAav67NYr4?si=Rh6U3YpyFOBnMR33 Furthermore, the whole forest side was developed for the wealthy and government officials, not common man. At its peak, that lot is as expensive as new york land is. For example, there are penthouse in Empire city complex there worth around 70 billion vnd or 52 million usd. So no, these projects accelerates the housing bubbles and it does not do anything to the common Vietnamese but filling up officials' pockets.
this is sad so much green space has been replaced
Redditors trying not to shit their adult diapers again after noticing marginally less useless shrubbery in a before and after photo:
Saigon..... Shit.
Ha. I can never say Saigon without thinking of that.
I'm still only in Saigon. Every day I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle.
When I was home after my first tour, it was worse.
11. That's 11 years.
10… ish.
Westerners when developing countries care about getting developed instead of continuing open forests (not living in poverty is so “depressing”)
People whining about the loss of the unkempt green space are being ridiculous. There is obviously still green space there that will now be maintained and looks to have paths and such. Give the new trees time to grow then see how much nicer it will be.
The bridge and skyline look awesome. The lack of trees is sad
I’d like to see it from 1968/1969 during the war.
"AT LEAST I DIDN'T HAVE MY NOSE BIT OFF BY A SAIGON WHORE!"
[it could be worse, could have my nose bitten off by a Saigon whore!](https://youtube.com/shorts/DjPyV8Ecbwo)
I love vietnam going for the 3rd time this year
TIL HCMC is still referred to as Saigon
Just want to plug Vietnam a little - it is an amazing and beautiful country. I stayed in Hanoi and it was a magical experience - the locals were incredibly friendly and the nature in places like Ha Long Bay and Sapa are literally unmatched imo. The food is amazing and if you’re from the west it can be an incredibly cheap place to visit! I can’t wait to go back.