The issue of road projects is particularly important in Vientiane and Hanoi, where in recent years the construction and improvement of roads and service networks have been one of the most important areas of public intervention and one of the main actions resulting from development aid policies. The actors are not unaware of the commercial impacts of these improvements in the short, medium and long terms: there is an enormous expansion of the zone available for urbanization and considerable potential for projects and investment as well as changes in urban travel practices. However, this network imposes a durable structure on the city. New roads and road improvements leave their mark on the city and from the basic pattern whose modification will which determine abd reinforce certain structural changes in urban spatial configuration ; changes in logics, meanings and directions of movement, changes in the forms of urban development which take place arounf the roads in question ; increased property market and lastly, cultural and social upheavals tha t result from new ways of living and building in the city. This explains why our study has not dealt exclusively with road improvements but all the architectural and urban projects which are transforming Vientiane and Hanoi, considering the behavoiurs of poorer inhabitants as well as large-scale property developers, as far as knowledge permits.