Vietnam has a long tradition of social engineering through which the ordering of urban space haseffectively been used to enforce the state’s vision of political and social order. With the country currently in tran-sition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy, the ordering of urban spaces is currently all themore important. This is prominently manifested in the numerous beautification projects that are being implemen-ted in Vietnamese cities. This article explores recent ordering endeavours and considers the way they are legiti-mated and contested in Vietnam’s new socio-political context. Three beautification projects in Hanoi areexamined using materials from policy documents, professional journals and media coverage. The article arguesthat state ordering actions and the ‘exemplary’ urban spaces they seek to create are embodiments of a complexsystem of orders of powers in transitional Vietnam, in which political visions of modernist socialism and the newmarket-oriented agenda are sometimes in alignment and sometimes clash. Overall, the state’s failure in sustain-ing these ‘exemplary’ urban spaces is emblematic of this hybrid system.