Thị xã

On the Second Tier, Vietnam is divided into 713 units. By virtue of Decree No. 42/2009/ND-CP, Town (Vietnamese: thị xã Chữ nôm:市社) are officially classified as Class III or Class IV. Urban District (Vietnamese: quận Chữ nôm: (郡)), together with Provincial City (thành phố trực thuộc tỉnh), Town (thị xã) and Rural District (huyện) have an equal status under the Second Tier units.

The towns may only be a capital of a Province, but not of a Municipality as the Second Tier unit. At the Third Tier, Town is divided into Ward (phường) and Commune (xã).

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

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