Redrawing new districts and geographical zones in Ho Chi Minh City

On July 1, 2025, Ho Chi Minh City merged with the neighbouring provinces of Binh Duong and Ba Ria-Vung Tau. This was part of the nationwide merger that reduced the number of cities and provinces from 63 to 34.

As part of the merger, Ho Chi Minh City abolished the district system and reorganised wards. VnExpress has created an interactive map that shows the 168 new wards and communes in Ho Chi Minh City after the merger.

In the previous system, wards and districts had separate governing bodies. For example, District 1 was subdivided into ten wards. There was a lot of overlap of governmental duties (layers of bureaucracy), so this was a bold and sensible move to streamline the local government system. I think that other countries in Southeast Asia will be paying attention to Vietnam’s provincial and city reformation.

With the abolition of districts, the city will now have to devise a new naming system to identify areas of this new megacity. Trying to remember 168 divisions will not be practical, so an improved way to identify an area in the city should be implemented.

With the districts being disbanded, it provides an opportunity to redraw new districts more logically compared to the old districts.

My proposal is for Ho Chi Minh City to create new districts to group the new wards, but these districts are not attached to a government body. The whole point of the abolition of the districts was to remove a layer of government, so this is not about adding a new layer of government.

These new districts would be more like a postcode that designates an area. A good example of geographical postcodes is in London. This was a good system for the inner area, but you see that the cardinal point designations disintegrate as the city expands outwards.

The old district system of HCMC up until 2020 was 24 districts (12 numbered and 12 named districts). In 2020, the districts of 2, 9, and Thu Duc District were merged into Thu Duc City (a city within the city of HCMC).

The 24 district system was a good way to indicate where a place is in the city, but the numbers and names were not in logical order. The numbered districts didn’t follow a pattern, and you needed to know the city to know where the named districts were.

I propose to classify the city into regional zones: Central, West, North, East, and South.

Each district will be numbered according to where they are in each regional zone. The numbered districts would be grouped like this:

Central 1-19
West 20-29
North 30-39
East 40-49
South 50-59

By using this system, the district number gives you a general idea of where you are in the city.

Not all of the numbers will be used in each grouping, so this solves the problem of what to do with District 13.

The old district system went up to District 12, and the rest of the districts were named. I don’t know if that was intentional to avoid District 13. Some of the old districts had a Ward 13, while old District 3 had the following wards: ⁠1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 12, 14, Vo Thi Sau.

Another system would be to include the zones in the numbers, so:

Central 2, West 23, North 34, etc.

In Vietnamese, it would be Tay, Bac, Dong, Nam.

In this system, the numbers can be reused, so each regional zone can use 1 to 12 instead (Tay 1, Bac 1, etc). In this system, there would be a possible total of 60 districts.

The direction of the district groups is inspired by the arrondissements of Paris, which spiral out from the centre.

A similar logic should apply to the new districts of HCMC. It might not be possible to make the districts a perfect spiral like Paris, but I would make it so that the last district in each zone is next to the first district in the next zone. For example, District 12 in Central is next to District 20 in West.

Another note about the cardinal points naming is that the area of former Ba Ria – Vung Tau Province is more Southeast than South. Maybe the district groups should be North, Central, and South? That system would mean that the former Binh Chanh District in the west and the former District 9 in the east would be part of Central HCMC. That doesn’t feel right, so I wouldn’t consider this grouping option.

I’m not going to suggest what wards should be grouped as districts, and what districts should be in each zone. I present this as a discussion starter to try and implement a system to identify areas in the newly expanded Ho Chi Minh City.

The new wards are already a better system than the last model, as now all of the wards are letter names instead of a combination of number names and letter names (the most notable new name being Saigon Ward). New numbered districts and cardinal point zones that reflect the expanded boundary of the city present a new opportunity to rebrand this great megacity of Southeast Asia.