Hoai Anh Tran

• Senior Lecturer
• hoai.anh.tran@mau.se

Hoai Anh Tran is Associate Professor in Urban Studies and is responsible for the bachelor program Urban Development and Planning. She teaches Architecture and Urban Form, Planning Theory and Theory of Sciences and Methodology.

My research stem from an interest in the social aspects of urban and housing development and planing and a concern for social justice within urban politics.

Hoai Anh Tran

Current research 2020-2022 (under Mobilities):

Bus stops and bus shelters in the production of public space and mobility

Modern transport planning is characterized by the idea of efficiency and rationality in which the mobile is considered more desirable than the immobile and faster speeds more advantageous than slow ones. As the result, transit spaces such as bus-stops tended to be designed as generic technical fixtures, to be placed anywhere in the city without paying atttention to the existing physical and social surrounding, and without taking into account the users’ affective perception of them.

Based on a users’ opinion survey, an observation study of bus-stops’ use and mobile interviews with bus users, the project highlights the significant role of existing physical structures and human activities at and nearby the bus tops both in terms of accommodating a comfortable transit experience well as in the construction of an attractive environment that shape the affective experience of everyday mobility. The project highlights the need to take into account existing physical and social environment in the planning and design of bus stops in order to make them into attractive transit places as well as urban public spaces.

Coming project 2022-2023.

State-led versus people-led: the synergies and tensions State-led versus people-led: synergies and tensions in Vietnam’s urban development

The project proposes 1) to investigate recent bottom-up space production initiatives at Hanoi’s urban periphery to supplement my previous research with new typologies of people-led developments 2) to synthesize my collected research with new findings in order to provide a rich chronological account of the typologies of people-led developments through different phases of Hanoi’s development from the 1980s to the present. The goal of the synthesis work is to compile material into an edited book that highlights the spatial and political agency of the urban poor, the negotiating character of the relationship between state and society, and the crucial role played by informalised processes in Vietnam’s urbanization.

Recent publication: 

Hoai Anh Tran (2021) Malleable Categorisation and the Regulatory Process: The Case of the Apple Flagship Store in Stockholm, Chapter 3 in Planning and Regulations: Practices, Institutions, Agency, Eds By Rydin, Beauregards, Cremaschi and Lieto.

ORCID: 0000-0003-2612-8187