In the technology world, a developer is someone who creates new products --
software,
hardware, etc.
In the rest of the world, a developer is someone who buys forests, swamps, and other land which they think of as "unused" by virtue of the fact that no roads have yet been paved across it. They turn wilderness into suburbia and are despised as a group by environmentalists, no matter how many or how few concessions they make in planning a new subdivision.
To be fair, the difference between a developer and and environmentalist is that a developer is a person who wishes to build houses out in the woods, whereas an environmentalist is someone who already has a house out in the woods.