Using Multi-Criteria Analysis and GIS to Evaluate the Level of

Urbanization in Ho Chi Minh City from 2004 to 2012

Nguyen Duong Minh Hoang

Faculty of Urban Studies, University of Social Sciences and

Humanities, VNU-HCM

10 – 12 Dinh Tien Hoang Str., Dist. 1,

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

minhhoang5493@gmail.com

Nguyen Hoang My Lan (Supervisor)

Faculty of Urban Studies, University of Social Sciences and

Humanities, VNU-HCM

10 – 12 Dinh Tien Hoang Str., Dist. 1,

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

mylannh@hcmussh.edu.vn

Abstract— The rapid urbanization process brings benefits and

challenges to economic and social development in Ho Chi Minh City.

Understanding the characteristics of this process helps the city's

managers to understand and control properly. Thus, the objective of

this research is to evaluate the level of urbanization in Ho Chi Minh

City from 2004 to 2012, particularly, the urbanization level is

examined in 2005, 2008 and 2012. By Multi-criteria Analysis method,

urbanization is evaluated in three main criteria: Economic and social

growth, Social services development and Technical infrastructure

development. Based on Analytical Hierarchy Process method, the

weights of those criteria are 0.411, 0.328 and 0.261, respectively.

Due to total score, urbanization level is divided into 4 rates: high (80

– 100), slightly high (65 – 80), medium (50 – 65) and low (less than

50). About half of 24 districts reached at high and slightly high rate

of development in period of 2004 – 2012. And trend of urbanization

in Ho Chi Minh City is toward north east – south west axis, resulted

from spatial statistics by Standard Deviational Ellipse tool in ArcGIS

software.

Keywords—urbanization level; trend; multi-criteria analysis;

spatial statistics analysis; Ho Chi Minh City

I. INTRODUCTION

Urbanization is considered as a result of the development of society, economy and politics [1] and depends on the development of industrial enterprises and infrastructure within the city as well as surrounding areas, thus urbanization is also an indicator of modernization [2]. Urbanization's characteristic may include the size of population factors and population shift from rural to urban areas [3] or conversion of land use purposes, urban density and growth of large cities [1]. In particularly, World Bank [4] suggested to investigate the urbanization process in Vietnam in five transitions including administrative, physical, economic, demographic, and welfare changes across the entire urban system. With multi-dimension consideration, urbanization process must be examined systematically to help the managers controlling and planning a proper development strategy.

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) with an area of 2,095.5 km² is located in the floodplain of the Sai-Gon – Dong-Nai river systems in the South of Vietnam and consists of 24 urban, semi-urban and rural districts. These districts are divided into 3 groups: 13 existing urban districts (District 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11 and Go Vap, Tan Binh, Tan Phu, Binh Thanh, Phu Nhuan district), 6 new districts (District 2, 7, 9, 12 and Thu

Duc, Binh Tan district) and 5 suburban districts (Cu Chi, Hoc Mon, Binh Chanh, Nha Be and Can Gio district). By the end of 2010, HCMC had a total of 7.5 million people [5] and has been projected to grow further to 10 million, 95% of which live in urban areas, according to The HCMC Master Plan 2025 (Decision No. 2631/QD-TTg approved by the Prime Minister in 31/12/2013). The city's economic growth rate in period of 2001-2005 was 11% per year, and grew up to 11.2% in 2006-2010, equal to one-second of Southern major economic area's and one-fifth more than national general one [6]. Due to rapid growth, it was not only difficult for immigrants to access to public services such as sanitation, hygienic water,… but also challenging for infrastructure improvement, social services supply, and surrounding environment [7]. For example, clean water supply for personal and domestic uses in HCMC was less than 100 liters per day in 2008 and even lesser in some suburban districts like Can Gio and Nha Be; somewhere in Binh Tan and Go Vap, residents have to use contaminated groundwater [8]; traffic congestion and flooding happen almost everywhere within the city.

The objective of this research is to evaluate the level of urbanization in HCMC from 2004 to 2012 based on appropriate indicators and criteria. The method used to define indicators and criteria in this research is Multi-criteria Analysis (MCA) and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is also used to calculate the weight of each group of criteria. Moreover, from calculated urbanization level, the trend of urban development in this period is analyzed by Standard Deviational Ellipse tool in ArcGIS software.

II. METHODS AND DATA

A. Methods

The research procedure is divided in 4 stages: (1) Defining criteria and setting up a framework to evaluate urbanization level, (2) Defining equation to calculate urbanization level in HCMC, (3) Collecting and normalizing data, and (4) Computing urbanization level and spatial statistics analyzing to derive thematic map for urbanization level in HCMC in 2005, 2008 and 2012. The detail research procedure is shown in Figure 1.

Multi-criteria Analysis method is used to define all suitable criteria and overall conditions to evaluate the level of urbanization in HCMC in period of 2005 – 2012. Due to MCA

principles, all selected criteria should be measurable, unique and non-redundant [9]. As the results, urbanization level is considered in terms of Economic and social growth, Social services development and Technical Infrastructure development. These aspects make three main criteria; each criterion consists of 3 or 4 sub-criteria and indicators as described in Table 1.

Figure 1: The research procedure with 4 steps

Analytical Hierarchy Process is often applied for elicitation of criteria weights. AHP provides a hierarchical structure by reducing multiple criteria into a pairwise comparison method for individual or group decision-making and allows the use of quantitative (objective) and qualitative (subjective) information [10]. In this research, only 3 main criteria are compared and calculated weights by AHP, other sub-criteria and indicators are defined to be the same

important as each other. After using expert knowledge, the weights are calculated as 0.411, 0.328 and 0.261 for Economic and social growth (X1), Social services development (X2) and Technical infrastructure development (X3). It means that when evaluating the level of urbanization, the growth of economy and society is the most important and the development of social services is more important than technical infrastructure. Consequently, urbanization level (UL) is given by the following equation:

321 261.0328.0411.0 XXXUL

Because defined indicators are measured in different unit, the score of each indicator is converted to 1 – 5 range due to maximum and minimum collected data, threshold defined by government regulations and step value. Every sub-criterion is then normalized to 1 – 100 range for easier and more accuracy comparison. Based on total scores, there are 4 levels of urbanization (UL): high (80 – 100), slightly high (65 – 80), medium (50 – 65) and low (<50).

The trend or directions of urban development are derived from Standard Deviational Ellipse tool in ArcGIS software for districts scored at least 65/100. Standard deviational ellipse [11] is a common way of measuring the trend for a set of points or areas by calculating the standard distance separately in the x and y directions. These two measures define the axes of an ellipse encompassing the distribution of features. The ellipse is used to see if the distribution of features is elongated and hence has a particular orientation. After calculated, three ellipses in 2005, 2008 and 2012 are overlaid to see how HCMC's development trend changes over time.

Table 1: List of elements used to evaluate the level of urbanization in Ho Chi Minh City

B. Data

Secondary data used in this research are collected from other relevant researches, departments and equivalent

aggencies in HCMC. Beside that, the spatial administrative data of HCMC is collected in 2008 when HCMC consists of 24 districts.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In general, urbanization level of HCMC in selected years is at slightly high rate; the number of highly developed districts increases over time. In 2005, 10/24 districts reached slightly high rate, and the number of urbanized (suburban)

districts had been arising in 2008 and 2012 in order of 14/24 and 15/24 (see Table 2 and Graph 1). Among them, District 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, Binh Thanh, Go Vap, Tan Binh and Tan Phu kept highest level. District 4, 11 and Phu Nhuan reached medium level although they are considered as center districts. Meanwhile, urbanization level of new urban areas such as District 2, 7, 9, 12, Binh Tan, Thu Duc has been gradually

Figure 2: Maps of urbanization level in Ho Chi Minh City in 2005, 2008 and 2012

Table 2: Total score of X1, X2, X3 and UL in Ho Chi Minh

City in 2005, 2008 and 2012

12

20

5

1515

18

4

141413

4

10

0

5

10

15

20

25

Economic and

Social Growth

Social Services

Development

Technical

Infrastructure

Development

Urbanization

Level

Count(s)

2005

2008

2012

Graph 2: Urbanization level in five areas of HCMC in

2005, 2008 and 2012

Graph 2: Number of districts scored at least 65/100 in

X1, X2, X3 and UL

arising over time. In contrast, urbanization level in Cu Chi, Hoc Mon, Binh Chanh, Nha Be and Can Gio remained so low, especially the development rate in Binh Chanh was not as projected in planning (see Figure 2). Moreover, the social services development increases more significantly than other considered criteria. Because technical infrastructure was not improved systematically in this period, quality of living in HCMC was still so bad, including lack of clean water, flooding due to old and insufficient drainage system, environmental pollution…

In this research, the city is divided into five areas: the central (7), the East (4), the West (5), the South (4) and the North area (4). The urbanization level in the South, the East and the West area increased from 2005 to 2012, in which the South had the lowest score than the others. In the central zone, the level of development kept unchanged in 2005 and 2008, but increased remarkably in 2012. Conversely, the North area had a decreased urbanization level over the times (see Graph 2).

Economic and social growth comprises 3 sub-criteria (urban population, urban workforce and economic development) with 4 indicators. In 2005, the population size of Ho Chi Minh City reached 6,3 million people and increased to 7 million in 2008 and more than 7,8 million in 2012. Districts with large population size are district 8, 12, Go Vap, Tan Binh, Binh Thanh, Binh Tan, Tan Phu, Binh Chanh, Hoc Mon and Cu Chi. Districts in west and northwest area has an increase in population density while there was a decrease in most of existing urban districts. Because the population density comes close to the development threshold, the scores of economic and social growth in existing urban districts are

not high. In opposition, high percentage of non-agricultural workforce and great economic growth rate indicated by non-state industrial production proportion (at contanst 1994 price) make the total score of this criterion higher than other main criteria. Figure 3 shows that strong decrease in economic and social growth from 2005 to 2012 happens in Binh Chanh and Can Gio district, while district 2 displays an considerable increase.

Social services development criteria consists of 4 sub-criteria (urban housing; urban health; urban education; public services of cultures and entertainment) with 5 indicators. Social services development presents the civilation development during urbanization process. Compared with economic and social growth, the average score of this criteria is slightly higher and the overall score is quite different over time and space. As decribed in Figure 4, social services were improved almost everywhere in HCMC, except for Nha Be, Can Gio and district 8.

The last criteria is technical infrastructure development including 3 sub-criteria (urban traffic, urban water supply and urban sanitation) and 4 indicators. Sufficient technical infrastructure not only helps to raise economic performance but also satisfies basic needs for inhabitant. Unfortunately, HCMC earned the lowest scores for this criteria when compared with the others. Only district 1, 3, 4, 5 and Tan Binh gained high scores, from 67.5 to 86.5 points in 2012; district 1 had the highest score overall (from 726.5 to 86.5 points during the 2005 –2012 period); vice versa, Cu Chi district had the lowest score (12.5 points during the time from 2004 to 2012) (see Table 2 and Figure 5).

Figure 3: Change in economy and society development score in 2005, 2008 and 2012

To identify trend of urban development in HCMC during the year 2005 – 2012, standard deviational ellipse is used to calculate mean center, rotation and standard distance in the X, Y direction of districts with slightly high level of urbanization (at least 65/100 scores). As the result (see Figure 6), in 2005, the concentration and main development direction was

towards north west and south east axis such as district 12, Go Vap, Hoc Mon, and Cu Chi. In 2008, ellipse’s rotation changed significantly, the development direction changed and spread to north east – south west. In 2012, the rotation at the North and Southwest tended to declined slightly and sharply ascended to the southeast, passing district 7.

Figure 4: Change in social services development score in 2005, 2008 and 2012

Figure 5: Change in technical infrastructure development score in 2005, 2008 and 2012

(a) Standard deviational ellipse in 2005 (b) Standard deviational ellipse in 2008 (c) Standard deviational ellipse in 2012

Figure 6: Trend of urbanization through standard deviational ellipse in 2005 (a), 2008 (b) and 2012 (c)

According to detailed parameters of ellipse in three years, it is concluded that trend of urban development towards the south-west and north-east was much more than other directions. Moreover, urbanization tended to pass from the central zone to suburb areas. This movement is considered the same as both the orientation planned in The HCMC Master Plan 2025 and the finding in previous study which concluded that spatial expansion trend of HCMC was in north east – south west axis [12].

IV. CONCLUSION

Urbanization level evaluated in the research comprises 3 three main criteria: Economic and social growth, Social services development and Technical infrastructure development. Among these criteria, economic and social growth is considered as the most important factor and the least one is technical infrastructure development. From 2004 to 2012, the level of urbanization in HCMC generally increased in almost all districts, about half of them were scored at slightly high rate. The research also identified that there is a trend of urban development in northeast – southwest axis at the end of this period.

The obtained results from this research will be a useful reference for other study on urbanization level and trend. However, for more reliable results, there's a need to calculate the weight of sub-criteria as well as indicators and to analyze the correlation between impact factors and data.

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Figure 7: Overlap and detail of standard deviational ellipse in 2005, 2008 and 2012