Can Vietnamese Cities Learn from Singapore? On the Challenges of Policy Transfer

The learning processes in the urban development of developing countries has not drawn any attention from academics. This is surprising because cities in Asia are increasingly working closely together to profit from each others experiences. In particular, the development experience of Singapore has received much attention from politicians and academics around East and Southeast Asia. A particularly interesting case are Vietnamese, which are trying to profit from Singapore as an Asian role model to urban development. In 2008, more than sixty officials from Vietnam visited Singapore to draw lessons from its development experience. The Singaporean government organized a familiarization program on urban development for the party secretaries of Ho Chi Minh City Party and Hanoi. Of particular interest were Singapore's experience in integrated township development. In the last two decades, the two countries have intensified their relations increasing the opportunities for policy transfers. This paper will review the Singapore-Vietnam relationship and drawing on the policy transfer literature analyze the most important prospects and challenges of the Vietnamese cities' ability to profit from Singapore's development experience. A case study of an attempted policy transfer between Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City will finally provide some evidence on the degree of policy transfer between the two cities.