Rapid urbanization and industrialization have had multiple impacts on rural Vietnam since economic reform in the mid-1980s. In 2006, the authors conducted a study of the social and economic transformations in three rural settlements in the area often described as Vietnam’s rice bowl. In this area, livelihoods and the nature of the local economic base, including farming, had changed radically. All three settlements could be described as success stories, especially when compared to other rural areas in the Mekong Delta region. Almost a decade later, this paper revisits the same settlements. It describes their social and economic evolutions and the key factors that help decipher three distinct but similar trajectories.

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