Street widenings....

Đường (Street) Nguyễn Văn Trỗi in Quận (District) Phú Nhuận of Thành Phố (City) Hồ Chí Minh is being widened, as many major streets have over the past several years.  This street is the primary route from Tân Sơn Nhất Airport to downtown Saì Gòn.  After passing the bridge over Rạch (Canal) Thị Nghè into District 3 and downtown, the name changes to Đường Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa.

Therefore the scene is very messy along this street as constructors demolish houses back to the "red line" (limit of the new street right-of-way) and install new pavement, curbs, gutters, and sidewalks.  In the photo above on the right-hand side of the street, the yellow house is yet to be sliced back to the line of the new wall in the right foreground.  The land-use rights owners are compensated for the loss of the use-rights to the land.  (I use the term "land-use rights" because the people's government owns all of the land in Việt Nam -- people and businesses have been allocated rights to use the land, and these rights can be tranferred.)  Beyond the red-line, they can either tear down the remainder of the house or building and build a smaller new building, or keep the remainder of the building and put a new front on it.

In the photo above, notice the house in the center that has been stripped back.  There is only about two meters of house left.  Evidently, the land-use owner has decided to keep the house and put a new front on it.  In the photo below, you can see that furniture and wall decorations remained in the rooms as they cut the house back.  The ground floor already has a new front in order to get the store back in business.