THE city has been expanded from east to west and from south to north in last two decades. For this, the real estate businesses are either to praise or to blame. They have made housing rather easy for the people. Not only this, the players in this sector were also able to help upgrade the living standard of the people. This has happened also outside the capital in other cities. Due to successful efforts of the developers in last few years, Chittagong, Sylhet or Khulna have also been experiencing rapid expansion. Yet, the responsibility of the developers in making the city unplanned cannot be ignored. Taking the advantage of corruption in the departments concerned, the housing sector players have minimised the openness of the city and made many areas unfit for habitation. Due to faults in building design, many residential areas have lost their residential character and healthy environment. People of these areas have either left the locality or been staying with a lot of dissatisfactions. Besides, the builders are to blame for illegally grabbing free spaces, which are to be preserved for playing of children. We all know these things are happening under business consideration. The developers are led by consideration of immediate profit from the sales of another flat than leaving space free for convenience of inhabitants. But we have found that a facility of playing ground or free space also increased the selling price of many apartments. Although the number of apartment blocks having such facilities is few but it has happened in some cases. In our apartments, the society has established playing ground as our developer left free space surrounding the building. After launching the playing ground, it has become a great attraction for other apartment users. We have heard that the children of other apartments create pressure on their parents to rent or buy apartment in our apartment bloc. So the rent of the flats in our apartment bloc has automatically increased. At this moment, it would be wise for the developers to revise their business strategy. When the prices of apartments have been increased manifold and their sales dropped significantly, introducing this kind of facilities would help the developers in creating better demand from the buyers. Rizawan Dewan Tikatuli, Dhaka
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