District-level town

In Vietnam, there were other kinds of district-level urban subdivision: urban districts (Vietnamese: quận), districts (huyện), municipal cities (thành phố thuộc thành phố trực thuộc trung ương) and provincial cities (thành phố thuộc tỉnh). Urban districts were for urban areas, and only consisted of wards, but provincial cities and towns could consist of wards (in urban areas) and communes (in suburban areas). Towns were similar to provincial cities, but smaller and with a lower population density. Moreover, municipalities could includes towns (such as Sơn Tây, Hanoi), and even municipal cities.

Towns were categorized as urban, with its residents classified as an urban population, although they could include rural areas where residents were involved in agriculture. Main economic activities in towns included industry, services and business.

Commune-level towns or townships (Vietnamese: thị trấn) were often upgraded to towns, or district-level towns (Vietnamese: thị xã), and district-level town could develop into provincial cities.

But district-level towns could also be downgraded to a district capital, especially when there was a merger of provinces. Examples include An Lộc (the provincial capital of former Bình Long Province), and Sông Cầu (formerly the provincial capital of Phú Yên Province).

Some district-level towns were downgraded to commune-level towns for a while and then re-established, such as Nghĩa Lộ, Bắc Cạn, Đồ Sơn (which from 2007 became the urban district of Đồ Sơn), Phúc Yên, Hà Tiên, Vị Thanh, and Gia Nghĩa.

When a district-level town was downgraded, the urban area became a commune-level town, while suburban areas were merged into other districts or established as rural communes. Some district-level towns became commune-level towns and were not re-established, for example: Đô Lương, Tiên Yên, Ninh Giang, Cát Bà, and Vĩnh An of Đồng Nai Province.

One unusual example was Phan Rang, a district-level town which was divided into two commune-level towns, Phan Rang and Tháp Chàm, in 1977. Both commune-level towns belonged to a county (Ninh Hải and An Sơn, respectively), and in 1981 the two commune-level towns were merged and were re-established as a county-level town named Phan Rang–Tháp Chàm, and later became a provincial city.

Kiến An, a former district-level town, became a municipality of Hải Phòng from 1962 to 1980, and was later downgraded into a commune-level town. It was reinstated between 1988 to 1994 before becoming an urban district of Hải Phòng.

Đồ Sơn was the only district-level town within a municipality (Hải Phòng). It acquired this status in 1994, and continued to be until September 12, 2007 when it became an urban district of Hải Phòng.

Sơn Tây was a district-level town governed as part of Hanoi from 1978 to 1991, before being merged into Hà Tây Province. It was upgraded into a provincial city in August 2007, but when Hà Tây Province was merged into Hanoi in 2008, Sơn Tây was again made into a district-level town.

• Mueang
• Urban township