It’s very easy to own a property but the question is where and how safe is it from human and natural crises such as air, water and sound pollution. In Uganda, most homes live in a disorganized setting and this has psychologically created a side effect on people living in such areas.
However, in an interview with Watchdog Uganda, a senior property consultant from Mirembe Villas, Derrick Musasizi said residential areas should entail a lot of private life and must be designed in a specific way that favours people living in them.
“Just imagine a private life intertwined with other public spheres, such as polluted sounds from the bars or churches, this defeats the purpose of being residential area because at a time when you need to have sleep, someone is playing music, which is loud accompanied by a noisy crowd, so this will interfere with the functionality of what your home was built to do,” he said.
Mr Musasizi added that someone having or owning a property in an organized community such as Mirembe Villas-Kigo will feel the sense and real meaning of a residential area.
“You will find that it’s organized; 100 per cent for residential purposes. So, you will have a neighbour that is also doing the same thing. Having a property that is residential for example at Mirembe-Villas if it’s a bungalow section, it’s organized for bungalow owners. Apart from not being noisy, it also gives the purpose of it being the same kind of house style in a specific zone.”
He also asserted that even if an area is purely residential, if it’s not having an organized house style in specific zones, it may not be safe for the owners because of privacy issues.
“It always feels good and secure if people living in a specific zoning have the same house style. But if you have a bungalow, neighbouring an apartment and then a double-stored villa, this is real confusion and in the end, it becomes a disorganized community despite the fact it’s purely residential because the primary reasons for the residential areas such Mirembe Villa-Kigo is comfortability and privacy,” he said.
“If you have an apartment next to you having everything of you visibly seen by the apartment owners you might find it not being residential as you would wish it to be. So it is very important to have it planned in the right way. You can have a planned estate for residential purposes that’s why at Mirembe Villas-Kigo, the developer planned it and also organized it in the right way. What does this mean? When you get to the main entrance gate, there is a shopping mall, it gives services to passersby and also to the community members within the estate however it’s private in a way that outsiders cannot enter the estate through the shopping mall,” Mr. Musasizi said. He added the bungalows are in their zoning, Apartments in theirs also as well as the double-stored villas.
He said that an organized residential area must have feeder roads from the main roads not for big trucks but for small vehicles going to different homes and also for security patrolling.
“It is very important to have a secure yet organized environment, it wouldn’t make sense to have a very organized community that does not have security, so you will end up having an issue of security which most people are running away from, from the unorganized areas that we have seen around Kampala and the suburbs. So at Mirembe Villas, you see that the concept is functional, it not only organized but it’s very functional,” he said.
Mr. Musasizi added; “What I can tell Ugandans is that an organized community is a peace of mind in a sense that you know you have come home from a long day’s work and you need that quiet environment for you to rest, you come to an organized residential area where you will not hear noises of churches, bars, factories. That is why at Mirembe Villas we catered for all this, apart from being a siren environment, it’s also secured 24/7. At the main entrance of the estate we provide security which caters for entry and exit, the security goes beyond foot patrolling during the day and also during the night, we also have CCTV coverage on all major feeder roads within the estate.”
He noted that within the estate, there must be things like Kids’ play areas, basketball courts, and soccer pitches since it’s a gated community.
Mr Musasizi also emphasized that people living in organized gated communities, especially Mirembe Villas-Kigo enjoy a lot of services such as property management where house maintenance, garbage collection, landscaping, compound cleaning.
“Garbage collection is also another big factor when it comes to residential areas because there is a lot of waste that comes out of homes that is why at, Mirembe Villas we fixed this by having an independent company to manage all waste within the estate. Those are some of the crucial common areas someone looking for a residential area or if you are looking at having a home must focus on because they are very important.”
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