Le Hoang Lan Nhu Ngoc, Senior Director and Head of Strategic Consulting at Cushman & Wakefield Viet Nam, noted that dating from the 1993 Land Law, Viet Nam’s real estate market has been developing for just over three decades.
Having passed through a foundational stage and subsequent periods of volatility and reconfiguration, the market is now entering a new cycle in which infrastructure, institutions and planning will increasingly determine long-term value.
Ngoc said this also placed new demands on urban planning in Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City. The challenge ahead is not merely to develop more projects, but to create new growth poles – urban areas attractive enough for people to genuinely want to live, work, study and settle in over the long term.
At a scale of hundreds of hectares, an urban area is no longer a simple aggregation of individual projects, but a living structure in which housing, employment, infrastructure, amenities and identity must be designed in tandem.
In practice, successful urban models are rarely built on housing alone. Examples such as Songjiang on the outskirts of Shanghai, Phu My Hung in Ho Chi Minh City, and Ecopark in Hung Yen show that value growth is not the starting point, but the outcome of sound urban logic.
Songjiang demonstrates that infrastructure-led development is only truly sustainable when accompanied by jobs, university clusters, innovation ecosystems and public services. Phu My Hung highlights the strength of disciplined planning and market confidence. Ecopark illustrates the importance of quality of life, identity and everyday experience.
In all cases, value appreciation comes later and the root of that appreciation lies in how the urban structure is organised from the outset.
Both Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City are facing pressure in their core areas, while many new zones have yet to become fully viable alternatives.
Ngoc observed that if expansion continues to focus solely on increasing housing supply, without parallel strategies for employment, connectivity and liveable ecosystems, satellite towns and large-scale urban areas will struggle to evolve into genuine centres.
For Ha Noi in particular, the challenge is not a lack of land, but how to ensure that areas beyond the centre become places worth living in, not merely places to sleep.
People do not relocate simply because housing is more affordable, but because of a better living experience: greener environments, lower-density surroundings, more accessible education and healthcare, and an overall improvement in daily life.
In other words, factors once considered “soft”, such as landscape, greenery, open space and community identity, are in fact powerful drivers of market demand.
“Ha Noi’s future planning should not stop at the goal of population dispersal. The city needs to create new urban centres with distinct identities and comprehensive urban ecosystems. Schools, healthcare, parks, public spaces, retail and everyday amenities should not be afterthoughts; they must be core components from the outset. Ha Noi does not simply need more urban areas, it needs places where people truly want to live,” Ngoc said.
She added that if Ha Noi’s challenge is one of quality of life, then Ho Chi Minh City’s is one of building confidence in new centres within emerging growth poles.
The city continues to expand beyond its core, with new development clusters becoming more defined, underpinned by Metro Line 1, Ring Road 3 and Long Thanh International Airport.
However, expansion does not equate to maturity. An area consisting only of housing will remain dependent on the old centre. Only when jobs, commerce, education, urban amenities and effective connectivity are in place can it function as a genuine growth pole.
Disciplined planning, clear zoning, strong connectivity and a consistent development sequence are the prerequisites for new centres to operate effectively, follow a coherent development trajectory and sustain long-term value.
When the market recognises those foundations, new areas can truly become centres in their own right, rather than mere extensions of the existing core.
“Urban planning success will belong to places that not only meet housing demand, but also create robust ecosystems capable of attracting residents, businesses and investment, and of generating sustainable value over time,” Ngoc concluded.
