Editor’s note: Thad Guyer writes to Tuoi Tre News to “give a little different perspective” into our Monday’s op-ed, where an expat argues that Ho Chi Minh City is becoming a city without a soul after living there for four years.

Read Guyer’s story, which reflects the author’s own view, below and please don’t hesitate to send us yours.

The idea that Saigon is "losing its soul" should be assessed in more than one way.

I agree with the sentiments of the article and comment, but want to give a little different perspective.

A city can appropriate architectural heritage and replace it with modernity without necessarily having lost its soul. Rather, a city can evolve its soul in depth and complexity.

I am an American living in District 4, which is largely untouched by any bulldozers. It is rich in two to four story old homes and buildings. For the most part, the other outlying districts beyond the core center of District 1 are intact.

What is happening in Saigon now has equivalence to Midtown Manhattan or Brickel in Miami, where skyscrapers have replaced some traditional neighborhoods with modernity.

Part of what counts is whether the high-rises themselves have architectural value, as with Shanghai, New York City, Miami or Hong Kong, and I think Saigon's architectural modernity is compelling and exciting.

As so beautifully portrayed in Ken Follet's novel “Pillars of the Earth,” architecture communicates to a population about who they are and where they are heading, whether the structure is a great cathedral or a towering skyscraper.

The Bitexco Financial Tower in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1, in my estimation, has given the younger generation (mediation age 24) in the city a sense of progress, expectation and inclusion in the global order.

The new Saigon skyline along the river is being developed in a way that inspires this generation with hope and confidence that their country, ravaged by world powers 40 years ago, is now being embraced economically by those powers.

In this regard, the government has shown itself capable of ushering in modernization in a responsible manner. That modernization is the key to the economic well-being of coming generations of Vietnamese.

Saigon's soul, in my opinion, is not being lost. It is simply becoming more sophisticated in the highly localized streets of the financial center in District 1.

Thad Guyer

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