This chapter documents the development of urban mining centers along the coal frontier of Quảng Yên and their impact on the landscape and its people. It examines the French vision of turning coal towns into orderly landscapes where spatial and racial segregation, as well as medical and hygiene surveillance, could be applied. The architects of these emerging mining towns expected their newly designed urban spaces to stabilize the restless and highly mobile indigenous migrant mining workforce while also protecting the towns’ tiny European population from epidemic diseases and security threats. However, several factors reduced these urban visions to a patchwork of modernity. Racial divides, security and medical concerns, coupled with strained resources, led to the unequal distribution of living space and public resources between the European and indigenous quarters. Infectious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, and plague, spread rapidly across the overcrowded dormitories of mine workers. In addition, crime and illicit activities flourished on the commercial streets of these towns and cities.