Downtown Yangon

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Downtown Yangon, also known as the Yangon Central Business District (Yangon CBD) and formerly the Cantonment, is the city’s central business area near the metropolitan center. It hosts many of Yangon's major arts venues and sports facilities. The east–west street grid was laid out by British engineers after the 1852 war, and the area was later developed by the Public Works Department and the Bengal Engineers. The CBD contains many sites on Yangon’s City Heritage List and is famous for its leafy avenues and late-19th to early-20th-century architecture. It has the highest number of colonial-era buildings in Southeast Asia. Although many buildings are decaying, they remain highly valued and expensive in the city’s property market. Buildings from this era are typically four stories high with ceilings about 14 feet, which allowed for mezzanines.

Notable historic structures include the former High Court, the former Secretariat, the former St. Paul’s English High School, and the Strand Hotel. In 1996, the Yangon City Development Committee created the Yangon City Heritage List to protect old buildings, and in 2012 Yangon imposed a 50-year moratorium on demolishing buildings older than 50 years. The Yangon Heritage Trust works to create heritage areas in Downtown and attract investors to renovate buildings for modern use.

Geographically, the CBD sits near the city’s center and is bounded by the Pun Hlaing River to the west, the Hlaing River to the south, and Pazundaung Creek to the east. Its street pattern follows a repeating block: a broad 100-foot road, two narrow streets, a mid-size road, two narrow streets, and another broad road, moving from west to east. Narrow streets are numbered, while major roads have names such as Strand, Merchant, Maha Bandula, Anawrahta, and Bogyoke Aung San. Since February 2010, pickup-truck bus lines have been banned in six CBD townships: Latha, Lanmadaw, Pabedan, Kyauktada, Botahtaung, and Pazundaung. In 2003 a car-horn ban began in six CBD townships and was expanded citywide in 2004.