District-level town (Vietnam)

The district-level town or county-level town (Vietnamese: Thị xã) is a kind of second level administrative unit in Vietnam, under the governance of the province or the centrally-controlled municipality. District-level towns are officially categorized as Class III or Class IV of urban regions by the Vietnam government. In July 2010, Vietnam has 45 district-level towns. A district-level town may be the administrative center of a province, but cannot be a district administrative center of a centrally controlled municipality.

District level

In Vietnam, there are other kinds of district-level urban administrative units: urban districts (Vietnamese: quận) and provincial cities. The urban districts is within urban and only consists of wards, but provincial cities and district-level towns can consist of the wards (within urban) and rural communes (within suburban). District-level towns is similar with provincial cities, but district-level town is smaller than provincial cities in population density. Moreover central-controlled municipality can include county-level town (Sơn Tây (Hanoi)), but can not include provincial cities.

The type of the district-level town is categorized as urban and its residents is classified as urban population, although there may still be a part of residents living in agriculture. Main economical activities in district-level town are such as industry, services and business.

Upgrade and downgrade

Regularly, a commune-level town (Vietnamese: thị trấn) can be upgraded to a district-level town (Vietnamese: thị xã), and district-level towns can develop into provincial cities.

But the district-level town can also be downgraded to a district capitals, especially when there is a merger of the provinces. That are the cases of the An Lộc (provincial capital of former Bình Long Province), Sông Cầu (formerly the provincial capital of Phú Yên Province) ...

Some district-level towns were downgraded into commune-level towns for some time and then be re-established, as Nghĩa Lộ, Bắc Cạn, Đồ Sơn (from 2007, became urban district of Đồ Sơn), Phúc Yên, Hà Tiên, Vị Thanh, Gia Nghĩa.

When a district-level town is downgraded, the urban become a commune-level town, and the suburban is merged into other districts or established rural communes. Some district-level towns have became commune-level towns and not re-established, so far as: Đô Lương, Tiên Yên, Ninh Giang, Cát Bà, Vĩnh An of Đồng Nai Province.

There is a rare case: Phan Rang as district-level town is divided into two commune-level towns, Phan Rang and Tháp Chàm in 1977. Each commune-level town belonged to a county (Ninh Hải and An Sơn), and in 1981 the two commune-level towns was merged and re-established as county-level town named Phan Rang–Tháp Chàm (now as provincial city).

Kiến An, a former county-level town, located in the central-controlled municipality in Hải Phòng from 1962 to 1980, later downgraded into a commune-level town and was recovered between from 1988 to 1994 and is now an urban district of Hải Phòng.

Đồ Sơn ever (after 1994) was the only county-level town within a central-controlled municipality (Hải Phòng), until September 12, 2007 it became the new urban district of Hải Phòng.

Sơn Tây is a district-level town governed under Hanoi in the period 1978 to 1991, then merged into Hà Tây Province. August 2007 this district-level town was upgraded into provincial city. In 2008 Hà Tây Province was merged into Hanoi, Sơn Tây was moved back into district-level town.

List of district-level towns

References

1. ↑ NGHỊ QUYẾT 90/NQ-CP