Perhaps the most notable change in Hanoi, a 1,000 year old city, has been the rapid physical growth. Buildings, even in the historic Ancient and French Quarters, have grown quickly upward and inward, as floors have been added and new buildings have been constructed over historic courtyards, yards, and anywhere there was space (the photo above shows a retail infill structure added to an older French villa). At the citywide scale, in 2008 the City expanded its boundaries to encompass villages and green areas in the periphery to allow for urbanization around the edges of the City. Farms near the adjacent urban areas were purchased to allow the construction of New Urban Areas (NUAs). The NUAs are huge residential and office projects, many in the hundreds of hectares, with some commercial mixed use components.
that picture could be from any mid sized town in northern India. Makes me nostalgic about my trips to Allahabad (UP, India), where old British colonial buildings are being adapted for uses similar to what's in the picture...which btw is missing the ubiquitous cow for it to be northern India
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