,
Dhaka,
Bangladesh Hong Kong Due to dense population and government control of land use,
Hong Kong's most common residential housing form is the highrise housing estate, which may be publicly owned, privately owned, or semi-private. Due to the
real-estate developers
oligopoly (sometimes called real estate hegemony, ) in the territory, and the
economies of scale of mass developments, there is the tendency of new private
tower block developments with 10 to over 100 towers, ranging from 30 to 70 stories high.
Public housing provides affordable homes for those on low incomes, with rents which are heavily
subsidised, financed by financial activities such as rents and charges collected from car parks and shops within or near the estates. They may vary in scale, and are usually located in the remote or less accessible parts of the territory, but urban expansion has put some of them in the heart of the urban area. Although some units are destined exclusively for rental, some of the flats within each development are earmarked for sale at prices that are lower than for private developments.
Private housing estates usually feature a cluster of high-rise buildings, often with its own
shopping centre or market in the case of larger developments.
Mei Foo Sun Chuen, built by
Mobil, is the earliest (1965) and largest (99 blocks) example of its kind. Since the mid-1990s, private developers have been incorporating leisure facilities including clubhouse facilities, namely swimming pools, tennis courts and function rooms in their more up-market developments. The most recent examples would also have cinemas, dance studios, cigar-rooms. Uniform high-rise developments may form 'wall effect ()', adversely affecting air circulation, causing some controversy. In-fill developments will tend to be done by smaller developers with less capital. These will be smaller in scale, and less prone to the wall effect.
Pakistan Given the security situation and power shortages in South Asia, 'gated communities' with self-generated energy and modern amenities (24-hour armed security, schools, hospitals, a fire department, retail shopping, restaurants and entertainment centres ) such as
Bahria Town and
DHA have been developed in all major Pakistani cities. Bahria Town is the largest private housing society in
Asia. Bahria has been featured by international magazines and news agencies such as
GlobalPost,
Newsweek,
Los Angeles Times and
Emirates 24/7, referred to as the prosperous face of Pakistan. Gated communities in Pakistan are targeted towards upper middle class and upper class, and are mostly immune from problems of law enforcement. ==Europe==