Housing is the third basic need of human beings, after food and clothing. It is not the individual house alone but a habitat with other facilities like hospitals, schools, prayer halls, play ground utilities and other recreational facilities. In other words, it's the environment with all support facilities for comfortable living that constitutes housing. Unfortunately, such living environment is either absent or insufficient in our city life. The condition is degrading day by day due to unplanned development and migration of people from village to cities, resulting in rapid growth of city population. Big cities like Dhaka, Chittagong and Khulna are no longer habitable. These cities have become concrete jungles of high-rise and low-rise buildings, with very little space in-between. The roads and other infrastructure have become inadequate for bearing the load of the city dwellers. The utility and service departments have failed to meet the demand of the huge population. Besides 35% to 40% of the city dwellers live in slums and sub-standard houses. A seminar on "Making Dhaka Livable" was held at Hotel Sheraton in 2006 under the auspices of the World Bank. A paper was presented by Mr Sadiq Ahmed and others in which the authors mentioned that Dhaka with a population of 34,000 per sq km had become one of the most densely populated cities in the world. The rapid urbanisation is putting pressure on the cities'/city's limited land and weak urban services, and poor city management, low efficiency, and corruption in service provision are accelerating the problems. Urban traffic is reaching nightmarish proportions, often causing massive delay in movement, with associated productivity losses. Water and air pollution poses serious health risks. The rising slum population is contributing to serious human and law and order problems. The participants also made some comments and suggestions on this. As one of the participants, my suggestion was to make the whole country livable. If we want to make Dhaka livable, we need to make the whole country livable; otherwise, it will be impossible to do so because of the one-way migration of people from the different parts of the country towards the capital. So, if we want to improve the housing and living environment of Bangladesh, we have to stop or reverse this migration first. Then, we have to prepare a master plan for the whole country and implement it, like many other countries in Asia. If we take the example of Singapore, the master plan was prepared during 1970's and implemented during the last four decades. Before that, Singapore was like many other third world countries, with crumbling city slums and kampongs with no sewerage system. It is very difficult to believe that people used to sell cooked food on the footpaths and streets of Singapore. The number of taxi drivers without license and insurance cover was higher than that of licensed ones. Cows and goats used to move around roadsides for grazing. But what a turn around during last four decades! Singapore has become one of the cleanest and greenest cities of the world, with wide roads and express-ways allowing free movement of people from one end to the other within 30 to 40 minutes. Modern apartments with more than 50% open space are standing all over Singapore. The Singapore government has already ensured at least one apartment for every adult citizen. In 2005, there were ten thousand excess flats lying vacant. Now, what should we do for improving housing and living environment in Bangladesh? Many of you may agree with me that first of all we should formulate a countrywide land use policy to determine how much land we shall use for housing, how much for mills and factories and how much should be kept reserved for agriculture to produce food grains. No more residential plots should be allotted to any individual for constructing private residential buildings. The government should take the responsibility of creating affordable housing for the people. We, private developers, can combine our efforts to accomplish this huge task. Next, we should prepare a master plan for the whole country as I mentioned earlier, including Structure Plan (SP) and Detail Area Plan (DAP). Necessary rules and regulations for city development have to be prepared by the concerned ministries and passed by the government. One such planning and construction rule, called "Dhaka Mohanagar Imarat Nirman Bidhimala," had been prepared and passed in 2006 and amended in 2007 and 2008, and was based on Floor Area Ratio (FAR) and maximum ground coverage. I believe this rule should be implemented in all the cities of Bangladesh immediately to stop further degradation of the living environment. To stop this migration of rural people to cities, we may think of developing Compact Townships (CT), where there will be low-rise buildings for common people, with hospitals, schools, markets, recreational facilities and modern sanitation system. Bio-gas plant for cooking and solar energy for lighting can be considered. Supply of safe drinking water also has to be ensured. Most importantly, it will include rural industries for creating jobs for these rural people. One such CT can be built in each of the 4491 unions throughout Bangladesh. By doing so, we can stop the conversion of agricultural land to residential land. Besides, much land will be freed up for cultivation. Pressure on Dhaka and other large cities will be relieved as well. Above all, we should change our self-centered mindset to people-centered mindset, and set a goal from national perspective with vision and mission. Besides, a public awareness campaign is very essential for conservation of nature and the environment. Engr. Mohammad Abdul Awal is Managing Director, The Structural Engineers Ltd.