The founding of the RDT was one of many early twentieth-century initiatives aimed at improving increasingly difficult living conditions in Rangoon; the municipality was underdeveloped, many thoroughfares were marshy and laden with wooden planks in order to make them navigable. Although the city centre did feature numerous masonry and to a less extent concrete buildings, its residents were housed primarily in flimsy timber structures.[2] The RDT oversaw the creation of new housing for Rangoon's poorer residents, an increasingly limited supply of housing in a town which saw 50 years of British, Chinese and Indian immigration in turn resulted in a property price spiral, pricing many out of the property market. The RDT sought to alleviate these conditions by encouraging migration outwards of Rangoon City Centre towards newer suburbs through the building of better roads as well as reclaiming land East and West of the centre of Rangoon.