Yangon Habitat Guide

Yangon was designed by Lieutenant Fraser, who also designed Singapore when Burma was part of the British Empire and is a pretty city defined by its riverside frontage and by its plethora of parks, gardens and lakes. Standing like a guardian angel on a hilltop overlooking the city is the spectacular gold plated ‘chedi’ (spire) of the Swedagon Pagoda. The city flows along a grid with the Sule Pagoda as the central axis from which radiate all the roads running north south and east west. Yangon is big even by the yardstick of large sprawling Asian metropolises, with an area of 570 sq km and a population of 5 million people.