The Urban Trend

From the air, Saigon appears to shimmer in the midday sunshine. The light dances off mile after mile of tin-roof shacks, and reflects from the waters of serpentine rivers. On the ground, unfortunately, the city has lost its glitter. Though it remained gracious and unhurried until four or five years ago, reports TIME Correspondent Marsh Clark, Saigon now suffers from the ills that afflict modern cities--and then some. No fewer than 894,000 vehicles, ranging from Lambrettas to lumbering trucks, jam the city's streets. Their fumes engulf Saigon in a noxious blue haze that is killing the city's stately tamarind trees. Sidewalks are crowded with vendors. Alleys are scenes of chaos, as dogs, children and chickens scurry amid garbage and rubble.

Row after row of shacks are built on stilts and often are constructed from sheets of rolled beer cans. One family lives with hundreds of Miller High Life emblems as the facade of its house, while a neighbor may prefer the hues of Pabst Blue Ribbon or Budweiser. Beneath many of these dwellings flow canals whose black waters reek of raw, pungent sewage. In the shacks, which have no electricity and little furniture, adults and children sleep side by side in a single room usually measuring no more than 8 ft. by 10 ft. Even so, they are lucky. Other residents of Saigon are forced to sleep on sidewalks, under bridges, or even in unused sewer pipes.

Ahead of Hong Kong. Saigon is bursting at the seams. Swelled by wave after wave of refugees and of peasants seeking prosperity from the war boom, South Viet Nam's capital has grown by 50%, to 2.2 million, since fighting was stepped up in 1964. Today it is by far the world's most densely populated city, with half again as many people in each square mile as in Hong Kong, the world's second most congested urban area. What has happened to Saigon is indicative of what is happening all over

South Viet Nam. The small nation of 18 million has experienced a migration to the cities unmatched in the history of Southeast Asia. During the past ten years. South Viet Nam has been transformed from a rural nation where 80% of the people lived on farms into a society where 40% to 50% are city dwellers. Other South Vietnamese cities have grown at an even faster rate than Saigon: since 1964, Cam Ranh has nearly quintupled to 85,000, Tarn Hiep has tripled to 62,000, and Danang has more than doubled to 400,000.

Experts disagree on the ultimate effects of the mass migration. Samuel P. Huntington, professor of government at Harvard, has argued that by accident the mass urban migration may turn out to be a great benefit for the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies. "In an absent-minded way, the U.S. in Viet Nam may well have stumbled upon the answer to 'wars of national liberation,' " he has written. Huntington's thesis: since the government controls the cities, the population shift has made the countryside much less important politically. As a result the Communists are finding it far harder than before to apply Mao Tse-tung's guerrilla strategy of using the rural areas to choke off and finally conquer the isolated and outmanned cities.

But others, notably the Rand Corp.'s Gerald C. Hickey, who has long studied South Viet Nam's social structure, fears that the frantic crush of some 2,000,000 war refugees and at least an equal number of peasants into the cities may create unmanageable problems. South Viet Nam's public services are unable to cope with the strain. In all major cities, the sewage systems, garbage collection, telephones and electrical facilities are overtaxed to the point of collapse. Saigon's bankrupt bus system stopped operating last year. Danang lacks sewers and garbage disposal; its water supply is contaminated. All the cities have vast slum areas. Adequate housing remains critically short, especially in Saigon and Hue, which suffered heavily in the Communists' 1968 Tet offensive against the cities. Medical care lags far behind demand.

Public schools are unable to cope with the great influx of children. In Saigon, where there is only one teacher for every 106 students, many schools operate in shifts from 7 in the morning until 7 in the evening. One result is that only 58% of Saigon's pupils complete their elementary education.

Local government tends toward the chaotic. Some cities, like Nha Trang and Bien Hoa, are actually only hodgepodge collections of sprawling villages, which lack overall central control; each of the villages is tightly run by a mayor who is directly appointed by province chiefs. Saigon is run by the national government, which has too many problems to give the capital the attention it needs. Whatever the system, the cities are plagued by the lack of trained career employees who could provide efficient administration.

Important Front. Some progress is being made. More than 9,200 new housing units have been built or are being built in Saigon. The capital has bought 50 new flotation fire pumps, which can draw water from the city's canals to fight fires. Result: while 300 to 500 shacks used to perish in a single blaze, the figure has now been reduced to as low as 30. With U.S. aid, Danang will soon receive a 2,000,000-gallon-capacity water-purification plant. In Saigon, 29 public health clinics have been established. Insecticide spraying is now widespread. The U.S.-run Saigon Civil Assistance Group (SCAG) is encouraging neighborhood self-help projects to increase civic awareness.

The war boom, while creating vast problems, has brought benefits. Even though a 30% inflation rate plagues the South Vietnamese economy, jobs in the cities are plentiful, and the pay, especially compared with wages in the countryside, is good. In addition, 158,000 Vietnamese work directly for U.S. military or civilian employers and countless thousands derive their income entirely in war-related activities, ranging from laundries to brothels.

When the war finally ends, South Viet Nam is likely to face a severe economic crisis. At present, it is highly improbable that jobs can be found for most of the 1,000,000 men now under arms. Furthermore, second-generation urban migrants, lacking the farm skills of their parents, will probably remain in the cities, intensifying the unemployment problem. A foretaste of the postwar situation is already evident in Danang, where the U.S. Navy is pulling out. Each day Vietnamese line up outside Navy compounds looking for work, only to be turned away.

Recent captured Communist documents have recognized the importance of the cities in the design for an ultimate victory. As one Viet Cong directive puts it, "The urban front is an important strategic area." Taking issue with the more optimistic Huntington view, SCAG Director Hatcher James says: "If things get bad, the Communist organizers will be in the slum neighborhoods, promising the sky. We've got to improve conditions before that time comes." But South Viet Nam's cities are already developing many of the same fateful characteristics that have caused despair and urban terrorism in other parts of the world.

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