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Away from the usual focus on major urban issues—models linked to the internationalization of cities and the regulation of metropolitan transition—this article examines the spontaneous and unthought spatial and temporal development of an urban social space and its morphology. The study undertakes a space-time analysis of a peri-central neighborhood in Hanoi, which reflects both the contemporary transformations of the Vietnamese capital and the complexity of the invisible spaces that are hidden both in the scientific literature and in the urban planning practice of megaprojects. In our method, ordinary city production is captured through the discreet day-to-day habits of the inhabitants, testimonies of non-experts, low-noise physical transformations and traces of local development plans. Interpreting the progressions and contradictions of urban changes in Thanh Nanh neighborhood as a transitional urbanism reveals more than ever the need for coherent public policies.