As Asia solidifies its position as the epicenter of global urbanization, Vinhomes is advancing a city-building model that integrates residential, commercial, educational, healthcare, and green infrastructure into unified ecosystems. With projects expanding from Vietnam into Congo, India, Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, the company is transitioning from adopting global urban standards to setting them on a global scale.
Two decades after its first projects broke ground on reclaimed industrial land outside Hanoi, Vinhomes, supported by the wider Vingroup ecosystem and its "ESG++" environmental standards, is defining what a good city looks like for the decades ahead.
The company's approach treats cities as integrated ecosystems rather than isolated developments. Early projects like Royal City and Times City were built on former industrial land, while Vinhomes Riverside emerged across a river that once marked the city's edge. These developments embedded schools, clinics, parks, transit, and commerce as foundational elements, not afterthoughts.
That model has proven resilient. Vietnam's cities have become a closely watched growth story, drawing over $38 billion in registered foreign direct investment in 2025, with real estate the second-largest recipient sector after manufacturing. Research from the McKinsey Global Institute indicates that roughly half of the world's 600 largest cities by GDP are now in Asia, and in most Asian countries, cities generate more than 80 percent of national output.
Vinhomes' structural integration with the Vingroup ecosystem means new housing arrives already connected to education (Vinschool, VinUni), healthcare (Vinmec), retail (Vincom Retail), hospitality (Vinpearl, VinWonders), and green mobility (VinFast, V-Green, Green SM), with renewable energy and regional infrastructure extending that network through VinEnergo and VinSpeed. This creates a self-sustaining economy in miniature, generating demand for jobs, services, and further investment.
Beyond integration, Vinhomes emphasizes environmental restoration through its "ESG++" framework. At Can Gio, Vinhomes Green Paradise is being built alongside a significant mangrove system, with construction deliberately constrained to protect it. In Ha Long, Vinhomes Global Gate sits beside a UNESCO World Heritage Bay, designed to complement the landscape.
This approach has attracted international recognition. Vinhomes Green Paradise became the first official global participant in New7Wonders' "7 Wonders of Future Cities" initiative. Jean-Paul de la Fuente, the campaign's director, described visiting the project as an encounter with a place where nature, people, and technology converge in ways he had not anticipated from the paperwork alone, adding that few developers anywhere have the execution capacity to build at this scale and speed while still managing that complexity.
The company's ambitions extend beyond Vietnam. Projects and development plans in Congo, India, Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia represent an effort to carry two decades of Vietnamese urban experience into markets facing similar questions. Historically, Vietnamese cities absorbed standards tested elsewhere; that posture is shifting, and not only within Vietnam.
Data underscores the stakes. The United Nations' World Urbanization Prospects 2025 reports that cities now house 45 percent of the planet's 8.2 billion people, more than double the share in 1950, with two-thirds of all future population growth through mid-century expected in urban areas. The number of megacities has quadrupled since 1975, from eight to 33, and more than half are in Asia. Capital is already voting with its feet, and McKinsey's research suggests the economic weight has shifted, even if global recognition has not yet caught up.
What Vinhomes is proposing is that the second half of that shift—reputation, precedent, and the standing to define what a good city looks like—is still being written. Twenty years on from a stretch of marshland and disused factory yards outside Hanoi, the argument is no longer about towers. It is about whether a place built quickly can still be built to last, for the people living in it and for the land it stands on.
