A Framing of Vietnamese ‘Toad Markets’ as Intermediary Spaces

The purpose of this paper is to examine the idea of ‘toad markets’ as intermediary spaces in the context of Vietnamese urbanism. These informal markets have been working well in symbiosis with many other well-defined or formal public spaces to embrace a large population of many cities. They play a vital role in offering an ordinary place with high vitality and conviviality to citizens, regardless of their backgrounds, to freely come and engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things. This will forge a transient or ‘rubbed along’ community, which has proved to be vital for sociality and cultural sustainability. However, the existence of toad markets has remained obscure, which leads to the government’s rejection and criminalisation. The paper proposes an alternative framework to interpret the phenomenon of toad markets, within which the ‘position’ of these places can ‘sit’ and be understandable.