Hà Nội Wants To Invent a New Urban Future. The Price Tag: $27 Billion.

An enormous redevelopment plan promises boulevards, parks, and modern neighborhoods along the Red River. It also raises a harder question: who will pay for Hà Nội’s next growth engine?

The Han River in Seoul features parks, walking paths, and modern residential districts along its banks. Shanghai has turned the banks of the Huangpu River into one of Asia’s most recognizable urban landscapes.

Hà Nội’s Red River looks very different to them.

Many riverside communities near the Red River are characterized by narrow roads, piecemeal construction, and inadequate infrastructure. Areas outside the dykes remain vulnerable to flooding. Although they are only a few kilometers from Hoàn Kiếm Lake and Tây Hồ (West Lake), some neighborhoods appear to belong to another Hà Nội.

For decades, the city has dreamed of transforming this landscape.

That ambition now forms the Red River Landscape Boulevard Project, a vast infrastructure and urban redevelopment scheme covering about 11,418 hectares across 16 wards and communes. [1] 

The project plans more than 80 kilometers of boulevards along the two riverbanks, along with parks, flood-control works, resettlement areas, and new urban developments.

Hà Nội approved a preliminary investment of 736.96 trillion đồng ($28 billion) in May 2026. The project is expected to be completed by 2038.

Its social scale is as striking as its price. Around 247,431 people, representing more than 70,000 households, currently live within the project boundary. 

The city plans to prepare between 79,000 and 85,000 resettlement apartments or land plots. This does not mean every resident will be displaced, as the final clearance boundaries will depend on the project’s individual components. But it could still become one of the largest urban redevelopment programs in Hà Nội’s history. 

If completed, the project could give Hà Nội new roads, public transport, flood defenses, and riverside parks. But for some of the people who live there, the government’s urban dream looks more like a nightmare.

Why has a plan that remained on paper for decades suddenly moved forward? Why do officials and residents see the same project so differently? And who will bear the cost of Hà Nội’s new urban ambition?

The River that Hà Nội Long Overlooked

Early twentieth-century maps show the orderly streets and urban blocks created under French colonial rule. But most colonial development remained inside the dyke system. The floodplain along the Red River was largely kept outside the city’s formal urban core.

There was a practical reason for the decision: the river was dangerous.

The Red River has nourished northern Việt Nam with water and sediment, but it has also repeatedly threatened settlements along its banks. Even today, any construction on its floodplain must comply with complex dyke and flood-control requirements. 

The danger has not disappeared. After Typhoon Yagi struck northern Việt Nam in September 2024, the Red River reached its highest level in Hà Nội in about 20 years. Thousands of residents in low-lying districts evacuated, while homes and roads flooded.

Yet the riverside population continued to grow during the second half of the 20th century.

After 1954, Hà Nội experienced decades of war, housing shortages, and economic hardship. Villages, river islands, and areas outside the dykes gradually became home to large communities. Housing was built over different periods, often without a unified plan.

Urbanization accelerated after Việt Nam introduced economic reforms in the late 1980s during Đổi Mới (a market-oriented “renovation” policy that transitioned the nation from central planning to global trade and private enterprise). New housing and commercial buildings appeared faster than workers could construct roads, drainage systems, and public spaces.

The result is a paradox. These neighborhoods are close to central Hà Nội and occupy increasingly valuable land. But they also stand in a floodplain governed by strict construction and dyke-protection rules.

This is why plans to redevelop the two banks of the Red River have repeatedly returned—and repeatedly failed.

A Dream Repeatedly Abandoned

In 1997, South Korea’s Daewoo Corporation proposed Hà Nội New Town on the northern side of the river.

The plan covered about 8,000 hectares and was expected to cost as much as $30 billion. Daewoo hired major international firms, including Bechtel, SOM, and Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture, to design a new city organized around strips of housing, greenery, and water. 

The Asian financial crisis disrupted the plan. Daewoo later collapsed, and the new city remained a drawing.

Other proposals followed, involving consultants and investors from South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. Some focused on flood control; others imagined new neighborhoods, transport networks, and commercial centers.

Most never moved beyond the planning stage.

Redeveloping the Red River requires Hà Nội to solve several problems at once: flood drainage, river engineering, transport, financing, land acquisition, and the resettlement of a large population. It is not merely an engineering challenge. It is also a political and social one.

Yet in 2025 and 2026, the plan began moving with unusual speed. Hà Nội approved the investment policy, identified land for resettlement, and selected a consortium involving Đại Quang Minh, THACO, and Hòa Phát to carry out the project.

The broad direction had been set.

But to turn the plan into reality, the city would need land. That is where its ambitions began to collide with the lives of residents.

One Home, Two Prices

Housing prices in Hà Nội have risen sharply since late 2023. The Ministry of Construction reported that newly launched commercial apartments cost an average of about 128 million đồng per square meter in the first quarter of 2026.

A house near central Hà Nội and inside the Red River project area may therefore be worth billions—or even tens of billions—of Vietnamese đồng on the market.

But when the state recovers land, residents do not negotiate a sale directly with the project developer.

Under Việt Nam’s Constitution and Land Law, the entire people own the land, with the state acting as their representative. Households hold land-use rights. The state may recover land for national defense, security, or socioeconomic projects deemed to serve the national or public interest. Compensation depends on the legal status and designated use of the land, the recognized area, and the plan approved by the authorities. 

This process creates two ways to value the same home.

For the authorities, its value is determined by documents, land classification, and compensation rules.

For residents, its value also includes proximity to schools and hospitals, relationships with neighbors, access to customers, and the cost of buying another home in the same area.

A small house may also function as a shop, workshop, or family business. Moving away can mean losing not only a home but also a livelihood built over many years.

The authorities see land required for roads, parks, and new urban districts.

Residents see they are forcefully separated from the place where their families have lived and worked for decades.

Both sides are looking at the same real property, but they see different values.

The Land Behind the Boulevards

Consider Hồng Hà Ward, close to Hoàn Kiếm Lake and West Lake. The river lies on one side; Hà Nội’s dense urban core lies on the other.

With new roads, bridges, and parks, this area could become some of the most valuable land in the capital.

The riverside areas are expected to include parks, embankments, flood corridors, and public spaces. Land farther inland could be redeveloped into apartment towers, commercial centers, and service facilities.

This approach is also what makes the project attractive to private companies.

Hà Nội plans to use a build-transfer, or BT, public-private partnerships. The companies will raise capital to build roads, parks, embankments, and other infrastructure. After the state receives those works, it can pay for them with land.

The city has provisionally identified about 2,655.8 hectares for this purpose, both inside the project boundary and elsewhere in Hà Nội. 

In theory, the exchange benefits both sides. Hà Nội receives infrastructure without immediately paying the entire cost from its budget. Developers receive land that they can turn into housing and commercial projects.

But the arrangement depends on one crucial question: how is that land valued?

A plot may be worth far more after a road, bridge, and park have been completed than it was before construction. 

If the infrastructure and land are not valued accurately and transparently, developers could capture a disproportionate share of the value created by public decisions and investment.

In the Red River Project, the most valuable asset may not be the boulevards themselves. It may be the land whose value rises because those boulevards exist.

But before new neighborhoods can be built, some of the people currently living there may have to leave.

From Homeowner to Renter

Imagine that you own a house.

One day, you are told that it must be cleared for a public project. The compensation is not enough to buy a comparable home. You move farther away or begin renting. Your children change schools. Your family business loses its customers. A life built over decades must begin again.

For residents within the Red River Project, the loss of their homes is the fear behind the maps and computer renderings.

Hà Nội says resettlement should come first. New housing, schools, health facilities, and public spaces are supposed to be prepared before other components are implemented. But residents evaluate such promises based on their observations with earlier clearances of other projects.

A VNA Media documentary, titled “Land Clearance: From Homeowner to Renter,” reported on residents affected by a road expansion project on Xuân Diệu Street. One family said five people were left without alternative housing or a resettlement place. Another resident said the family was offered an apartment but would have to pay an additional VND2.6 billion to obtain it. 

More recently, over 300 households in Hồng Hà Ward left their homes to make way for the construction of the Trần Hưng Đạo Bridge approach roads. Many had to rent while waiting for resettlement land or apartments. Some paid more than VND10 million a month to remain near their children’s schools.

These cases do not prove that the Red River project will produce the same outcome. But they explain why official promises do not automatically create the people’s trust.

For residents, the essential question is simple: after surrendering their present home, will they still be able to own another one?

If the answer is no, a legally compliant compensation process can still turn a homeowner into a tenant.

Residents are not necessarily opposed to better roads, cleaner parks, or stronger flood protection. They fear becoming the people who pay the highest price for benefits that others will enjoy, and they will be left with nothing.

But the authorities face another pressure of their own.

A Growth Project

Việt Nam’s leaders want the economy to enter a period of sustained double-digit expansion.

At a meeting with Hà Nội’s leadership on January 10, 2026, Communist Party Chief Tô Lâm urged the city to unlock new growth drivers, maintain double-digit growth, and achieve at least 11% growth for 2026.

That is an exceptionally ambitious target. Hà Nội’s economy expanded by about 8.16% in 2025. City officials estimated that achieving growth above 11% would require roughly 750 trillion đồng in total social investment in 2026.

The Red River Project appeared at precisely this moment.

Its preliminary cost of nearly 737 trillion đồng is close to the total amount of investment Hà Nội believes it must mobilize across its entire economy in 2026.

The comparison is imperfect. The project will be built over more than a decade, and its full investment cannot be counted as growth in a single year. But the scale helps explain its appeal to policymakers.

The project could generate a vast chain of economic activity: land clearance, road and embankment construction, resettlement housing, new urban districts, property transactions, credit, employment, and tax revenue.

Every new road improves transport, but it also raises the value of nearby land. Every new urban district provides housing, but it also generates construction, financing, and commercial activity.

Hà Nội itself describes the Red River corridor as one of the capital’s nine “development axes”—not only a central green space but also an economic, commercial, service, and urban corridor.

Seen from this perspective, the project is not merely an attempt to beautify the city. It is a growth project.

That helps explain why an idea that failed or remained on paper for decades is now being pushed forward. Hà Nội does not simply want a riverfront comparable to Seoul or Shanghai. It needs a development zone large enough to create investment, construction, property activity, and new revenue for years.

But the pressure to deliver rapid growth makes the social questions more urgent.

Land acquisition and resettlement require time, consultation, and transparency. Residents need to know how much they will receive, where they will live, where their children will study, and how they will earn a living.

When the same project is expected to support an 11% growth target, those questions risk being treated as obstacles to progress rather than conditions for a fair redevelopment.

The government sees a new engine of growth.

Developers see valuable land.

The people living within the project boundary see homes, businesses, and communities whose futures are now uncertain.

Hà Nội may yet transform the Red River into a new symbol of the capital. But an urban miracle is not measured only by the width of its roads, the height of its towers, or the size of its investments.

It must also be measured by what happens to the people asked to make way for it.

The question is not whether Hà Nội should develop, but rather whether those who bear the cost of that development will share in the value it creates.