Beyond the invisible informal: The Perils of Urban Regeneration in Colombo’s Slave

Island

Gihan Karunaratne
Jagath Munasinghe
Dr. Tanzil Shafique

Abstract

Urban regeneration is often celebrated by planners and professionals—particularly those with a

neoliberal agenda— as a policy that has the potential to attract valuable investment, generate
wealth, and increase overall quality of urban life. This chapter provides an alternative southern-
situated perspective that argues that urban regeneration outcomes are not always as benign as
depicted, particularly when dealing with existing settlements and informal activities. There are
instances where regeneration efforts, in its failure to acknowledge and value the complexities of
urban informality, adversely contribute to the erasure of spatial memory, the unjust
displacement and dispossession of longstanding residents, and the erosion of communal
neighbourhood spaces. These detrimental effects are evident in the case of Slave Island, an
urban, high-density and mixed-use district located at the core of the city of Colombo, where the
outcomes of the ongoing Urban Regeneration Project have been promising for a few, but
traumatic and unsettling for others most who live there. The project paints a one-sided picture of
impoverishment alone, turning a blind eye to the rich social networks, diversity of ethnicity and
economies, and architectural and urban innovations that makes Slave Island a “community”.
Against this invisibility in the official urban regeneration projects, Uusing in-depth interviews and
onsite observations, this article registers the benefits, adverse costs and unintended
consequences of urban regeneration on such communities. It .

Following these observations, this article urges authorities to revisit makes the case for
revisiting the conventional ‘environmental cleansing’ approach of urban regeneration aand
instead, shift towards a more sensitive ‘conservative surgery’ urban regeneration approach that
celebrates the positive aspects of informality in such settlementsapproach. This approach. This
shift helps create economic opportunities while preserving and respecting the rich traditions,
sense of community and identity embedded in such an the uunique urban setting located in the
Sri Lankan city of Colomb in Colombo and beyond. o.

Introduction: The Concept of Urban Regeneration

Urban regeneration can first be understood to be part of the widely accepted global policy
consensus. Fueled by the popular mantra ‘cities are the engines of growth of an economy’ and
the United Nation’s oft-cited forecast that more than two-thirds of the world population will be
living in cities by 2050, it takes for granted the need for international organisations, national
governments, and individual developers to channel resources to transform and develop cities
and urban environments. The ongoing transformation of cities has been dominated by a variety
of public and private-led large-scale developments of housing, road, public utilities, and other
infrastructures (World Bank, 1998; UN, 2018). Urban regeneration, or efforts to renew core
areas of cities that were previously run down after years of negligence and disinvestments, have
been a popular and favoured mode of urban development in many countries, perhaps inspired
by past and revered urban regeneration projects such as the United Kingdom’s King’s Cross,
Singapore’s Kalang River Bay and the more recent Hong Kong’s Kwun Tong Town Center.
It's curious to note that “urban regeneration” has become a key product supported by a
neoliberal ecosystem, where multilateral financiers such as the World Bank actively advocate
regeneration project and provide loans, large-scale consultancies such as ARUP provide the
technical expertise world-wide, and even major universities provide architectural and urban
planning degrees specifically to serve regeneration needs across the globe. The impact of multi-
lateral financed projects that ignore the local conditions and causes havoc on the local
communities can hardly be overstated in the current political and economic turmoil in Sri Lanka
(please insert appropriate reference/trusted news sources etc.). Colombo, where the case study
for this chapter is situated, has been at the epicenter of the ongoing turmoil. The global reach of
such development-project-complex means Sri Lanka is only one of many places where such
urban regeneration projects to produce ‘global cities’ is currently afoot.

Such
rRegeneration projects, especially in developing countries commonly grouped together as the
‘Global South’, have two general features in common; the first pertains to the type of physical
transformation it engenders, favouring typical features of the ‘global city’ (Sassen, 1991). Such
features include aluminum and glass cladded monolithic high-rise buildings, the presence of
corporate headquarters of multinational companies, upmarket residential apartments and
commercial spaces, modern infrastructure facilities, branded shopping malls, and large privately
owned public spaces over the more organic and heterogeneous built environments that have
emerged from colonial pasts. The second feature relates to the mode of transition in which
regeneration occurs, placing the utility value of land in prime urban locations above the right for
space and the well-being of inhabitants.

Critical development literature often cite that the impact of urban planning and regeneration
projects are far from positive. Social control, or the regulation of bodies in space without much
care for the lives within them, seems to be the modus operandi of the planning practices of
policy makers and government officials (Sandercock, 2005). While ‘public consultation’ and
‘participatory planning’ processes are mandated staples of planning discourses, urban
development decisions are often made in a highly centralised and coercive manner in violation
of inhabitants’ right to the city. There has been a long history of criticism of urban renewal
projects in the US in terms of race and politics, and it’s failures are well-dcumented (see Avila
and Rose 2009 for an introduction to the intersection of race, culture and politics of urban
renewal planning in the USA). In global South context, there are debates about the
consequences of regeneration causing gentrification and dispossession (see López-Morales
2015 for an overview), and often in-depth analysis of particular regeneration projects (see the
consequences of 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa by Steinbrink, Haferburg and Ley 2011).
However, as the chapter will point out, there is a significant gap in the literature that intersects
how urban regeneration projects intersect with urban informality and/or impact informal
settlements.

Critics also charge thatA fundamental commonality across these various c contemporary
planning projects is are serving to ‘the exacerbation of promote social and spatial exclusion,’
creatin where the g consequences are not in favour of the poor’ and doing ‘little to securedismal
environmental sustainability’ (Watson, 2009). Although globalisation is cited as being key to
unlocking wealth, it seems to also have caused greater social and spatial stratification in cities
across the world (Marshall, 2003). Hence, the outcomes of urban regeneration projects are
rarely as benign or beneficial as authorities propose (Watson, 2009). There are resistances
across the Global South against such projects, but often they also fall into the trap of a “politics
of compensation” (Roy quoted in Karaman, 2014, p.290). The contestations around such
projects have been noted in the Global North as well (Ruming, 2017).

Intersecting Urban Regeneration and Urban Informality

Against this backdrop, this chapter extends the debate around the merits of
regeneration and urban development projects and its failures through a case study of the impact
of urban
regeneration in Slave Island1, a bustling and multicultural locality in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The regeneration project of the Slave Island area is part of the greater Urban Regeneration
Project of the City of Colombo (URPCC), implemented since 2011 by the Urban Development
Authority (UDA). The process involved resettling families to newly constructed multi-story
buildings in Slave Island from high density areas consisting of mostly dilapidated houses and
shop buildings built next to warehouses and lightweight industries. Planners expect to recover
resettlement costs by leasing out portions of freed land to corporations. The Slave Island area
regeneration project was piloted in two neighbourhoods, commonly known as Glennie Street
and Station Passage, the largest single land blocks in the area. A few more neighborhoods are
currently being targeted for regeneration, but no formal plans have been prepared yet. Despite
the objections of residents, who unsuccessfully filed a case in the court of law, both lands were
acquired by the UDA and then handed over to two foreign companies in 2012. The resettlement
stage of the project has been completed at the time of writing.

Insert map 1

The official project plans call Slave Island and such other places as ‘shanties’, a variation on the
theme of slums. However, it has been argued elsewhere (Dovey et al. 2020), there is
ontological differences between slums (a set of physical conditions with particular lacks) and
informal settlements (places produced beyond state and capital). While there perhaps are slum-
like conditions in Slave Island, there are also different aspects of urban informality and how it
has been a place where right to the city exercised by the marginalised (as Purcell reworks the
notion of such informal places in light of Lefebvre’s original conception, see Purcell 2013). The
plurality of the urban informality in Slave island is manifested by its historical and cultural
presence as the arrival cities for migrants, the trajectory of self-build initiatives by the dwellers,
self-organised urban operations, facilitations of informal trading activities, and overall, the social
capital of mutual care and affordance of urban living.

1 ‘Slave Island’, a land surrounded by Beira Lake in Colombo, was coined by the British colonial rulers to
refer to how the Dutch rulers (1658-1796 AC) used it to house Caffri enslaved workers brought from
Africa.
The first point of arrival for this chapter is the fact that, as evidenced by the findings presented,
urban regeneration projects in Colombo fails to acknowledge and value the multiple shades of
urban informality, and the how they play a central role in creating the identity and memory of
Slave Island as a unique place in Colombo. The positive aspects of the informal is made
invisible, and attention is only focused on the squalor and contrasted with the utopian image of a
global city to constantly portray these places as impoverished and in need of wholesale
regeneration. This production of the invisibility of the informal helps to reduce the vibrant and
complex place into squalor of urban poor in need of rescue, and helps in the socio-economic
legitimization of such regeneration projects.

SIecondly, it is argued here that while these projects may have provided economic opportunities
for some,
in the current formal of wholesale demolition and resettlement with tokenistic public
participation, they are also adversely contributing to the erasure of spatial history and function,
the unjust
displacement and dispossession of long-standing residents, and the loss of important relational
and reciprocal spaces in the neighborhood.

To make such a case, thisThis article is organized into three key sections. FIt
first, it contextualizes the article by providing a schematic overview of the historical evolution of
Colombo’s urban environment. This is followed by a critical analysis of the rationale of urban
regeneration in Slave Island and its adverse consequences through on-site observations and
in-depth interviews conducted between January 2017 and December 2019 with longstanding
residents from two Slave Island n neighborhoods, Glennie Street and Station Passage. The
article concludes by reflecting on the steps central and municipal governments should take to
ensure that regeneration is done well, calling for an urban regeneration framework that is
economically generative yet community-centric and just in a rapidly changing city.

The City of Colombo: From Colonial Governance to Urban Regeneration

Colombo has dominated Sri Lanka’s socio-political and economic affairs since the 19th
Century, but its historical evolution as a city can be traced back to the 11th Century when it
was first used as a small seaport by Moorish traders. Initially governed by the Kingdom of Kotte,
the port was later captured by the Portuguese in the early 16th Century and refounded as the
city of Colombo. Portuguese rule lasted for more than one and half centuries until the Dutch
arrived in 1658.

Under Portuguese occupation, the city was confined to a fortified area of about one square mile
(Hulugalle, 1965). After seizing Colombo Fort, the Dutch extended its rule of the city by a few
square miles beyond the original Portuguese enclave. These new areas include sites that still
exist today, such as the bustling commercial neighbourhood of Pettah, the coastal promenade
of Galle Face Green, and the vibrant neighborhood of Slave Island, where descendants of
migrant workers and enslaved Cafri (Kafir) people have historically resided (Brohier, 1973).
In 1796, the evolving political situation in Europe forced the Dutch to acquiesce their territory to
the British East Asia Company (Israel, 1995). With the British company’s acquisition of the city
and other parts of Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was called back then, Colombo eventually became a
gateway that connected the island with the rest of the world. At the initial stages of their rule,
the British constructed a series of gravel roads to connect Colombo to other strategically
important locations (Munasinghe, 2014). The development of Colombo’s port and industries
created employment opportunities that drew large numbers of migrants to Colombo from
around the island.

These migrants eventually found shelter in shanties constructed on low-lying lands and
substandard line houses built in tenement gardens. The banks of the Beira Lake, which forms
part of Slave Island, and the few properties developed by the wealthy businesspeople of Slave
Island, were also among the lands accessible to the newcomers.

In the 19th Century, as industries and warehouses grew, Slave Island became home to a
growing working-class population and to small-scale vendors. Muslim and Tamil newcomers
also accepted residence in Slave Island, either as rent-paying tenants or squatters without
formal titles to the land.

In 1915, the British government introduced the Housing and Town Improvement Ordinance with
the intention of reorganising Colombo’s built environment to adhere to British standards.
Officials then ushered in a wave of urban planning when in 1921 they turned to Patrick Geddes,
the famed Scottish botanist and urban planner, to create a plan extending the administrative
and functional area of Colombo to a few more square miles. Geddes, who had been sensitive to
the organic nature of settlements in Indian cities, suggested a ‘conservation surgery’ approach
instead of a ‘policy of sweeping clearances’ to manage these settlements (Tyrwhitt, 1947:45).
Fascinated with the landscaping of the wealthy and middle-class residents of Colombo, he
aspired to turn Colombo into the ‘Garden City of the East’ (Panditharatna, 1963). However,
none of plans prepared for Colombo had a specific focus on Slave Island and its surroundings.

Colombo’s economy continued to grow at a moderate pace until the United National Party was
elected in 1978. The new administration embraced free trade and deregulation policies in
alignment with emerging global neoliberal trends. During the 1980’s, the Colombo Fort
remained Colombo’s main trade and business hub, but many commercial centers also arose
beyond the original confines of the city. Today, as of 2012, the Colombo Municipal Council
manages an area of 35 square kilometers with a population of 780,000, while metropolitan
Colombo comprises a dozen local authorities overseeing three million residents.

The expansion of Colombo was also catalysed by the government’s decision to move the
country’s administrative and political capital to Sri Jayawardanepura Kotte, a few miles away
from its original location. This move made space for the development of core areas of the city.
To accelerate economic development, urban development became an overt focus.
In order to promote and regulate urban development, the new government established the
Urban Development Authority (UDA) in 1978, which was given myriad powers to plan, regulate
development, attract capital, acquire and disburse land, and clear substandard housing.
However, the UDA’s planning initiatives were disrupted by the mid-1980’s civil conflict as
terrorist activities paralysed the economy. Security was an overriding concern of the
government and its citizens. The government built massive steel fences around public
buildings, barricaded roads, and placed different areas under armed surveillance. People began
withdrawing from public spaces as they became overshadowed by fear.

Despite the climate of terror and uncertainty, several urban development projects emerged in
Colombo; communities living in unauthorised and under-served settlements which, according
to official statistics, constituted half of the city’s population, were subjected to slum and shanty
upgrading projects implemented as a part of the Million Houses Program (1979–1989). To
facilitate high-value commercial activities, industries and warehouses located within the vicinity
of Colombo Port were relocated from the city center to new suburbs. This process provided
more space for commercial developments within the city, and communities dependent on
port-related informal economies for their livelihood were compelled to find new opportunities
in Colombo’s expanding commercial and service sectors.

In 2009, after almost 30 years of civil unrest, government military forces re-established
territorial and governmental control of the country. The government saw the need to
repair a conflict-damaged economy, and this was a focus of the national election at that time. In
its election manifesto, the victorious nationalist United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance set out
strategies to steer the country economically to become the ‘Wonder of Asia’ (Mahinda
Chinthana, 2010). Shipping, aviation, trade, energy, education, and tourism were identified as
six propellants of growth.

Transforming Colombo into an attractive global city was deemed key to growth, evidenced by
how the defense and urban development portfolio was placed directly under the country’s
president and under the ministerial supervision of his brother.

The streets became lively again as the government removed barricades, dismantled bunkers,
and opened roads. With assistance from the World Bank, the government initiated the Metro
Colombo Development Project in 2009 to promote integrated development in the greater urban
area. The project had three main focuses: flood and drainage management; road and
infrastructure improvement; and city beautification (Colombo Municipal Council, 2021).

Seeing the quality of Colombo’s urban environment as a key factor in its investment appeal and
liveability, the government now intends to rehabilitate public open spaces, improve walkways,
build waterfronts, create new parks and recreational areas, renovate old buildings, and improve
flood and drainage systems.

In tandem with the Metro Colombo Development Project, the Urban Development Authority
(UDA) also endeavoured to regenerate neighbourhoods in the city. It established the Urban
Regeneration Project of the City of Colombo, a project which aims to bring about a slum-free,
self-sustaining Colombo by 2023 and provide adequate housing for 60,000 families living in
substandard and informal neighbourhoods (UDA 2021). With the support of private sector
actors, the UDA has been resettling these residents from their ‘substandard’ settlements to
newly constructed, high density, and low-cost houses in multistorey buildings. The project has
been financed through the leasing of cleared lands to private sector developers, who in turn
develop such lands into commercially viable entities. One neighbourhood identified as a target
for regeneration was Slave Island.

Insert Image 1 , 2

The Narrative of Impoverishment and the Erasure of Spatial History and Function

‘Over fifty percent of the Colombo city population lives in shanties, slums or dilapidated old
housing schemes,’ declares the UDA’s Urban Regeneration Project web page (UDA 2021). The
matter-of-fact statement is then followed by an assertion that these residents are ‘underserved
communities’ living in an unhealthy environment. It then assigns itself the seemingly noble and
ambitious goal of eliminating these shanties, slums, and dilapidated houses through the
relocation of dwellers to new housing schemes of ‘acceptable standards’ before eventually
stating that these ‘liberated lands’ are to be used for productive mixed and commercial
development. In other words, the UDA considers half of Colombo city’s population and where
they live as unproductive, unattractive, and underutilised. These residents are deemed to be out
of place, and regeneration interventions designed to have the effect of ‘transforming Colombo
into a world recognised city’ are therefore seen as necessary and urgent (UDA 2021).

The UDA’s narrative of impoverishment that depicts half of Colombo’s people and the places in
which they live in such homogeneous, reductive, and unflattering terms carries a grain of truth.
However, it fails to acknowledge how built environments like Slave Island, a mixed-use and
multi-ethnic community of 5,500 residents, are homes to complex social ecosystems comprising
a rich mix of ethnic, religious, class and income groups. They have organically evolved into their
present state through incremental contributions and constructions by its non-architect residents
over many decades; hence its history, strong sense of identity, and functionally built
environments. With UDA’s Urban Regeneration Project, this vibrant and organic ecosystem now
faces the looming threat of demolition and erasure.

Many Slave Island houses are indeed dilapidated, overcrowded, and poorly
maintained. Houses are often constructed close and back-to-back to one another in a cluster,
which contributes to a sense of over crowdedness. In part this is because of a lack of resources,
but this is also because residents tend to go above and beyond to hold onto ethnic and
familial ties. After marriage, couples would usually occupy a unit in the cluster of Slave Island
homes. Often, grandparents would also live with their family. In extreme cases, a unit might
house 10 to 15 residents, with four extended families living in a tight space together. Some
families sublet rooms to gain supplementary income, and in such cases, there are no personal
or recreational areas for family members. On average, five people share one room unit. The
lack of natural light, ventilation, and basic amenities like indoor washrooms in these homes is
also evident. Other chronic problems the community faces include abject poverty, insecurity of
land tenure, and the lack of infrastructure to mitigate the effects of monsoon floods.
Insert Image 3

Due to cramped conditions and the lack of space, Slave Island community members are also
compelled to find creative ways to delineate private and public territory. One can see a spatial
logic in the way Slave Island communities employ varied materials, colors, as well as
community surveillance to define personal and social boundaries. For example,
contrasting types of floors and pavements are used for several types of neighbourhoods,
although these indicators are sometimes unclear. In many houses, laundry is hung outside to
create a precarious designation between what is public and private. Throughout the day,
mothers sit and congregate outside their homes on garden plastic chairs given the paucity of
indoor space and lighting. In some clusters of small houses in Slave Island, there is an unwritten
rule that whenever the females of a house need to change their clothes or talk privately, all the
men leave the house and wait outside.

Insert Image 4

At the same time, the UDA’s one-sided narrative of impoverishment is incomplete as it does not
capture how Slave Island communities comprise a mix of formal wage earners, informal
workers, remittance workers, as well as middle to upper income business owners, who have all
productively played an important if overlooked role in the Sri Lankan economy.
Slave Island is home to teachers working in government and private schools, white-collar
employees who work as bank workers and office assistants, as well as porters, street vendors
and municipal labourers. Delivery drivers, freelance mechanics, tuk-tuk (three wheeler)
repairmen, plumbers, electrical technicians, and salespeople in Colombo shops and luxury
hotels also live in the area. There are also families who prepare food for restaurants and hotels
in Colombo, who package spices, snacks, and sweets for the domestic retail market, and who
sew garments for clothes outlets in the city. Women from Slave Island are also commonly
employed as domestic workers in the homes of Colombo’s upper and middle class families.
Tuk-tuk operators and truck drivers also live in the area. Some Slave Islanders also have family
members who send remittances home through their work abroad in Middle Eastern countries.
Those who work domestically either work from home or are employed in close proximity to their
homes.

Insert Image 5,6

Slave Island’s community is also tight-knit and economically interdependent. Community

micro-financing, for example, has been a common source of livelihood for Slave Islanders to
conduct house renovations and repairs, bicycle and tuk-tuk purchases, wedding celebrations,
annual festivals, and other family functions. These funds come from local independent lending
organisations as well as international non-profit organisations. The local Buddhist temple or
Community centers often help facilitate community meetings with lenders. Nonetheless, these
community debts can sometimes become untenable in the absence of good savings and
economic management skills. Unlike in other marginalised communities in Colombo, education
is also highly valued by many Slave Island parents. A vast majority of youth have at least a
secondary education diploma. Often drawing on remittances from family members in the
Middle East, many parents send their children to attend private international secondary schools
and universities.

Overall, what we see here is the invisible informal—a more complete and complex view of
Slave Island that is far from the UDA’s oversimplified narrative of impoverishment. Indeed, many
Slave Island residents refer to the settlement as ‘our community’ while taking offense when
outsiders describe their homes pejoratively as ‘shanties.’ This has prompted local authorities
and government agencies to use the more euphemistic term of ‘under-served settlement’
instead.

Although the UDA authorities have correctly recognised economic and spatial problems in Slave
Island as issues, as previously mentioned, one should also not overlook how the community’s
old houses and buildings are also infused with creative expression, functionality, and communal
identity. Through two centuries of creative place-making by long-standing community members,
many of the houses and buildings—now earmarked for regeneration and demolition—in Slave
Island holds much cultural and functional significance to its residents.

Many households in Slave Island are constantly reinventing the architecture of their homes as
soon as they attain the means to do so. When these owners acquire funds, when their family
expands or when their children get married, they renovate their homes by adding a
vertical or horizontal space. Incremental cosmetic additions such as chrome-plated balconies
and elaborate exterior cladding are seen as assets as well as symbols of status. Slave Islanders
who have sought employment in the Middle East have introduced Arabic decoration and
ornamentation as well as Islamic architectural styles to their houses, a creative expression of
wealth and prosperity. These unique external architectural designs will be destroyed once the
regeneration project is fully implemented.

In the interior of many Slave Island houses, entrances open to a colourfully painted living or
reception room. Walls display large family portraits, photographs of graduating sons and
daughters, as well as cricket and Bollywood celebrities. The display cabinet is the focal point of
the space, which houses personal objects, heirlooms, dowry, objects d’ art and religious icons
expressing cultural and ethnic identity. These carefully arranged decorations and artifacts
reflect the family’s level of social status and sense of honour and value.

Peppered with rich historical identity and architectural ingenuity, Slave Island’s built
environment has also been home to well-known landmarks of Colombo, but many of these
buildings are now earmarked for regeneration and demolition. It is home to the Fort Railway
Station, a colonial edifice which connects commuters from outside the city to central Colombo
and provides residents of Slave Island with an informal marketplace to trade and sell household
goods. The Masjidul Jamiah (Malay Mosque), Jumma Masjid (Wekanda Mosque), and other
mosques in the area, said to have existed from the 1700’s, are reflective of the large presence
of Malay and Muslim communities, while the small Buddhist shrine by the railway station, the
Holy Rosary Church, and Sri Murugan Kovil stand as evidence of Slave Island’s cultural and
ethnic diversity. Even during Sri Lanka’s tense times, no major conflicts were recorded in Slave
Island. The Elephant House Factory and the John Keells Office Complex have historically
provided residents with direct and indirect employment. The Rio Cinema, Castle Hotel and
Nippon Hotel are well-known tourist sites in Colombo as well. The Castle Hotel was an iconic
141-year-old community hotel and bar for Slave Island’s working-class—tuk-tuk drivers, low
level office clerks, and snake charmers (Ratnayake, 2016). A 150-year-old building constructed
by a wealthy Ceylonese philanthropist in the 19th Century, the De Soysa building was constantly
bustling throughout the day with its street arcade of eateries, informal gathering places, and
gaming pubs (Thomas, 2021). While the railway station and religious buildings have yet to be
demarcated for regeneration, the factory and warehouse complexes as well as the Castle Hotel
and the De Soysa Building have all been demolished for regeneration by the UDA. The loss of
these landmarks, which are closely associated with people’s memories, lifestyles and histories,
have been traumatic for many in the area.

While the regeneration project has laudable aims, what we see here is that it is also bringing
about adverse changes to Slave Island’s historical, identity-rich, and functional built
environment. From in-depth observations and interviews, we will next see that the project is
also robbing residents off essential sources of livelihoods, displacing long standing residents,
and eroding valuable spaces of interaction, congregation, and interdependence. It is to these
other adverse changes that we now turn.

Displacement and Dispossession

Lionel, a friendly and attentive Sinhala businessman from Matara, owned a small tea
shop for over twenty years in the corner of a building earmarked for demolition under the
regeneration project. As a teenager, he came to Colombo in 1986 to seek employment and
found a job as a helper in a hardware retail shop in Slave Island. Before long, the young man
endeared himself to residents who visited the shop, and in 1991, with the financial support of
other businesspeople in the area, he leased premises for his own tea shop. The visibility and
accessibility of Lionel’s tea shop, which faces two main roads, as well as his congeniality and
thoughtfulness are key factors that help his business flourish. His affordably priced tea
and the eatery became a favoured destination for residents and workers in the area. A couple of
years later, Lionel bought the lease for the shop from the original lessee. Happily married, he
purchased a residential flat through the Maligawatta housing scheme in Colombo and settled
with his wife and two children. The tea shop was his sole source of income.

Although Lionel was initially not in favour of the Slave Island regeneration project, he consented
to the acquisition of the property and agreed to temporarily move out of the building while a
a new building was constructed. The surveys, negotiations, and transfer of land happened so
quickly that the building’s tenants and property owners had no opportunity to learn about the
details of future space allocation. Lionel was eventually offered a shop on the second level in
the interior of the new building, hardly conducive for his business. Caught off-guard with the
ill-suited arrangement, Lionel has been desperately appealing to the UDA and the developer for
a space on the ground level. He did not expect to lose his street-level site as well as valuable
income when he consented to the development. Now, his only option is to find a buyer for the
poorly located upper-level retail space.

Lionel was not the only one who struggled to sustain a livelihood in the aftermath of the
regeneration project. Shereen, a respected community member of Sinhala and Burgher
descent, was born and raised in Slave Island’s Station Passage. After the death of her parents,
the 6.5 perch (163 square metres) plot of land where her family house sat was divided between
her and her two brothers. When her brothers sold their portions after their respective marriages,
Shereen, middle-aged and single at that time, had to repair the partly demolished house to
support herself. Part of her income came from the rent she received for one of the house’s two
small rooms, and the rest from her respective long-time informal brokerage, moneylending, and
home-cleaning businesses.

The Slave Island regeneration project forced the entire Station Passage community to
temporarily relocate, and residents received a monthly allowance of SLR 25,000 (USD 125) to
live in a rented accommodation for two years while waiting for their designated low-cost houses
to be ready. Shereen found a small room in the Borella area, four kilometers from Slave Island,
for a monthly rent of SLR 10,000, but the balance of SLR 15,000 barely covered her living
expenses that included essential food, grocery items and the regular medicine that she needed
to deal with inherited health issues. She managed to deposit an equivalent of three
months’ rent—money she had carefully saved over many years—as an advance for her new
unit. However, the proposed resettlement housing project was delayed and Shereen’s
temporary displacement was extended by a few years. With rising costs of rent and living,
Shereen, alongside other Station Passage community members, demanded that the developer
increase their monthly allowance. Under financial pressure, the development company tried to
shift responsibility for cost increases to the UDA.

After several rounds of negotiations, the UDA agreed to increase allowances by SLR 5000, but
Shereen’s property owner was not prepared to extend her tenancy and she was forced to seek
another temporary residence. By now, her savings have mostly depleted. Shereen expressed
her predicament to many agencies, but no one offered her a solution. Once a money lender,
she then started borrowing money at a high interest from other informal sources as a last resort.
Shereen was not alone in her situation and is now living precariously under the constant threat
of losing both her home and income.

Miguel, a Tamil Christian who lived in a two-storey unit in an old building on Glennie Street
for more than fifty years, lost both his home and business without compensation amidst
the regeneration project. His grandfather first rented the unit from the building’s owner in the
1950’s. The Rent Act of 1972, enacted by the socialist government to prohibit property owners
from increasing rent or forcefully evicting tenants like Miguel’s family, led owners to abandon
and neglect their properties, which resulted in entire buildings degenerating and becoming run
down. For years, Miguel did not pay rent, but did pay property tax and utility bills to the
Municipal Council. He had also been operating a small tailoring business, first founded by his
father, on the ground floor of the unit.

When the Slave Island regeneration project took place, the UDA conducted a detailed property
survey and invited property owners entitled to compensation to submit their claims. Based on
the agreement between the developer and the UDA, the developer was legally bound to
issue compensation on a unit basis, either to the owner or the tenant. To the surprise of
Miguel and his neighbours, the descendants of the building owner, unseen for decades,
suddenly came forward to claim possession and the right to compensation. After a lengthy
hearing process, Miguel lost his case because he could not substantiate his right to the property
with sufficient documents. Miguel’s family eventually lost both their long-time home and
tailoring business. As he was not wealthy enough to afford another dwelling in the area, Miguel
was forced to leave Slave Island. Many of his other neighbours shared a similar fate as they
were all tenants with no formal lease or rental agreement with the owner of the property, and
therefore, could not prove ownership or compensate for their lost homes.

Khaleel, a Sri Lankan Malay employed as a bank clerk in Colombo, inherited a house on 6
perches (150 square meters) of land in Glennie Street from his father. He wished to fully rebuild
the house on the land. Khaleel and his wife did not have sufficient savings to pay for the work,
but he was able to obtain a 15-year mortgage on his property, located in a prime location,
from the bank in which he had been a long standing employee. Khaleel built a modern two-
storey house with a floor area of nearly 200 square metres, and they lived in it for more than five
years. In 2012 however, Khaleel’s long-term plans were derailed as his neighbourhood was
considered for urban regeneration.

The regeneration project observed all legal requirements, including the payment of
compensation to owners and existing occupiers and the provision of resettlement options to
affected families. Residents had two options: either move away with compensation paid for
their lost properties or accept as compensation a unit in the high-rise housing complex that was
part of the proposed development. Households were paid a monthly allowance to meet the
costs of temporary accommodation. The quantum of compensation for each property was
based on the Government Valuer’s assessment and the UDA was forbidden to make ex-gratia
payments to any of the more than 500 families who lived within the project area.

After settling his mortgage with the bank, Khaleel was left with very little funds. By then, he and
his wife had spent all their savings on rebuilding their house. Although he had a
plan to purchase another property that would provide him with the amenities he had enjoyed in
his own house, Khaleel did not have enough money to pursue this ambition. He and his family
were forced to accept a unit in the new high-rise complex. The unit he was offered in
compensation was less than 70 square meters in area. He was comparing his new unit with the
more comfortable and spacious house that he previously owned. Since 2017, Khaleel has been
appealing to the UDA and to other officials for proper compensation for the loss of his house.,
without much success.

Although the regeneration project has disadvantaged many Slave Island residents, it is equally
important to recognise that it also has positive benefits. Ranasinghe, a government employee in
a minor staff position, had grown up unaware of the whereabouts of his parents but knew that
they possessed a 60 square metre row house in Station Passage. Ranasinghe first moved into
the small inherited house after marrying a woman he met during secondary school who comes
from a middle-class family in suburban Colombo. They had two daughters, who were both sent
to study at a popular government school largely attended by students of middle-class families.

Uncomfortable with their lives in Slave Island and their small home, deemed unfit for their
growing daughters, Ranasinghe’s family had always aspired to move away from the tight and
crowded environment of Station Passage but lacked the capital required for a down-payment
on a larger house elsewhere. When the regeneration project took place, they accepted
compensation for their Slave Island house and happily bought a property in Homagama, twenty
kilometres from Colombo. Despite the long commute to Colombo, they saw regeneration
as their way out. Other similar and positive cases can be found in both neighbourhoods, with
residents viewing regeneration as a blessing to their long-term plans.

The Erosion of Communal Spaces

Given Slave Island’s strong and cohesive communities, each with their own idiosyncratic
internal and external social arrangements, it is also important to critically question how the
government’s regeneration project, which omits plans for conducive spaces for shared activities,
would also be eroding vital communal spaces in Slave Island. These spaces are conceptualised
here as important relational and reciprocal spaces where residents cultivate strong bonds of
mutual support and friendship.

While the new multi-storey buildings do have some spaces for public gatherings on a separate
floor, residents have found them to be too regimented for informal gatherings of children, youth,
and the elderly. The 1.5 metre wide access corridors on each floor are too narrow and dark for
interaction. Instead, they have to resort to the lift lobby, stairways, and the open car park to
meet, play, and mingle with neighbours.
Insert Image 7

Along alleyways on the fifty-seven streets, elderly grandparents and young mothers would
wash, clean, and care for children together. One can also observe how spaces that are neither
demarcated as strictly private or public, such as small courtyards and openings between houses
or ‘peripheral spaces’, also act as sites for a rich array of socioeconomic and cultural activities,
interaction, and bonding among neighbours and community members. Often, these spaces are
where community members would grow plants, children would play, and men would repair
domestic appliances as well as tuk-tuks. These spaces foster communal resilience and
togetherness as well as neighbourly tolerance.
Insert Image 8

Muslims and Malays, the dominant ethnic groups in the area, have strong ties to immediate
relatives and close friends. Marriage within ethnic and religious groups is common. Residents
trust their immediate neighbours and the wider communities on whom they rely for physical
and financial security. Although most people in Slave Island have a basic command of English,
they prefer to use their native language, either Sinhalese or Tamil. On most afternoons and
evenings children take Sinhala, Tamil, and Mathematics tuition classes in a private residence;
as many as twenty pairs of children’s shoes can sometimes be seen outside these houses.
Teens attend either Colombo’s leading government and local schools, and a few others attend
international schools. Yet, despite going to different schools, they seem to maintain strong
bonds of friendship. These children are also digitally literate and a majority have a smartphone,
where they constantly spend time together in the alleys and open spaces, updating social media
pages and sharing videos.
Insert Image 9
The street is another ideal public space, a space for shared social capital and a place where
communities come together to work towards shared objectives. Throughout the year, residents
and the wider community organise activities such as religious festivals, children’s sports
days, and talent contests. These celebrations involve entire communities. Weeks of preparation
include decorating streets with artifacts, colorful flags and banners, and erecting temporary
ornamental structures in public spaces and the spaces between buildings. The community
comes together for funerals, marriage ceremonies and birthday celebrations; on funeral
occasions, most of the community witnesses the procession from house to crematorium. In
Slave Island, communal activities compensate for deficiencies in the provision of public
amenities and spaces.

Concluding Reflections: Towards a Conservative Surgery Approach

It is clear that the governments intervention in Slave Island and similar urban districts in Sri
Lanka to ‘regenerate’ and ‘formalise’ the city’s landscape is driven by a popular understanding
that anything not ‘planned’ and organised into simple clean geometric forms in the physical
environment are ‘matters out of place’ (Douglas, 1996). Since the organically evolved and self-
organised entities do not comply with the dominant socio-spatial order of the city set out by the
authorities, such edifices are generally deemed ‘informal’. As Ananya Roy (2007) observed with
regard to cities of developing countries, informality and its connotation of exceptionality is a
practice produced by the state to rationalise planning. These are perceptions produced through
development literature, government policy papers, and popular planning jargon to categorise
and control land, labour, and territories (McFarlans, 2012). Yet, with Slave Island, it is clear that
the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ or the ‘organic’ and ‘organised’ spatial order are a set of mutually
reinforcing processes that cannot be disconnected from each other. Pursuing one could be at
the cost of the other, and therefore, current market-driven, beautification-motivated, and top-
down regeneration approaches popularly adopted in city planning in developing countries need
to be reconsidered in light of social and environmental justice concerns.

Many long-standing buildings in Slave Island have already been demolished and many long-
evolved places in the area have been erased by regeneration efforts. Still, communities living in
Church Street, Ahamath Lane, Dispensary Lane, and Wekanda Withanage Mawatha have yet
to be subjected to regeneration. While communities left within these enclaves are not large in
number, limited to clusters of 40 to 50 households, these nuclear and extended family
households have resided in the area since the early 1900’s. Now, like those previously living on
Glennie Street and Station Passage, they risk losing their longstanding homes, everyday
livelihoods and income, and historical landmarks as well as communal spaces. It is thus
necessary for government officials to critically rethink if not overhaul their approach to urban
regeneration in Slave Island, to move towards an approach that is more empathetic and
sensitive to the rich culture and places in the locality. In other words, a return to Patrick Geddes’
earlier ‘conservative surgery’ regeneration approach (Tyrwhitt, 1947).

An approach befitting the contemporary challenges of Slave Island recognises the need to
‘surgically’ improve the quality of life of Slave Islanders, but at the same time, it must also
strengthen and support the people, places, and pursuits historically embedded in the locality. To
support the people of Slave Island, those who have been staying in the area for generations, the
government ought to take on a more community-centric approach, one that takes seriously the
discourses, needs, and experiences of the community, more so than the profit interests of
corporate or development partners. Officials also need to justly compensate and support those
who have lived in the area for generations, like Miguel and many others, who were forcibly
displaced (evicted) and dispossessed simply because they did not have legal title to the
property as a result of a highly centralised and profit-driven development apparatus. Second, it
must seek to preserve, protect, and restore the character and diversity of places on Slave
Island. The unique spatial configuration and self-built architecture, constructed in the hands of
generations of skillful ‘non-architect’ residents of Slave Island, echo the spatial patterns of
medieval European cities, Japanese historic townships, and Indian urban heritage districts
which have mostly been kept, preserved, and restored rather than demolished.

Third, such an approach would also recognise and value the economic and cultural pursuits of
Slave Islanders to the city’s economy and the greater economy of the nation and provide
initiatives that steadily support the economic lives of these workers. Tuk-tuk repair workers, tea
shop owners, business families, domestic workers and daytime labourers of Slave Island all
contribute their fair share to the economy. The rich array of cultural, ethnic, and religious
practices not only support the socio-psychological wellbeing of the inhabitants, but they also
help bring richness to the social fabric of the city of Colombo. The government’s regeneration
project must therefore find ways to cultivate more shared communal spaces that would help
residents to continue cultivating effective social networks that promote more interdependency
and inter-class harmony.

As discussed throughout this chapter, the communities of Slave Island are not the ‘low-income’
groups imagined in popular urban planning and development literature, project documents and
financial instruments from multilateral organisations. Rather, they are part of a complex social
ecosystem with a rich mix of ethnic, religious, and income groups, a curious juxtaposition of
informal and formal, entangled in producing the uniqueness of the place.. Their neighbourhoods
are not mere ‘under-served settlements’ as often categorised by the authorities, but spaces of
history, spatial memory, co-production, contestations and yet harmony and harmony. Rather
than seeing such communities and their spaces as informal settlements, slums, or favelas to be
uprootedas places that can be uprooted, demolished and resettled, a more just urban design
and planning we sshould celebrate the inherent urban informality as the creation of communities
and an expression of a rich communal life, and look for ways to sustain and build upon it as the
starting point of a citizen-led urbanism. .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Atukorala, S., Lanerolle, P., & de Silva, A. (2010) Effects of the Global Financial Crisis on the Food
Security of Poor Urban Households; CASE STUDY COLOMBO, SRI LANKA. Faculty of
Medicine, University of Colombo / RUAF Foundation, Leusden.
https://ruaf.org/assets/2019/11/Case-study-Colombo.pdf

Avila, Eric, and Mark H. Rose. "Race, culture, politics, and urban renewal: An introduction." Journal of
Urban History 35, no. 3 (2009): 335-347.
Brohier, R. L. (1973) Discovering Ceylon, Colombo. Colombo, Lake House Investments.

Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA). (2004) Understanding the Dimensions and Dynamics of
Poverty in Underserved Settlements in Colombo.
https://www.cepa.lk/wp-content/uploads/2004/10/Understanding-the-Dimensions-03-
min-min.pdf [Accessed 7th December 2021].

Colombo Municipal Council. (2021) Metro Colombo Urban Development Project.

https://www.colombo.mc.gov.lk/metro-colombo.php [Accessed 7 December 2021].

Das, R. (n.d.) Urbanization in Sri Lanka: A Case of Colombo. Center for Urban Economic Studies,
Calcutta, University of Calcutta.

Dayaratne, R. & Kellett, P. (2008). Housing and Home-making in Low-income Urban Settlements: Sri
Lanka and Colombia. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment. 23, 53-70. Doi: 10.1007/s10901-007-
9099-0.

Dayaratne, R. (2010) Creating Sustainable Habitats for the Urban Poor: Redesigning Slums into
Condominium High Rises in Colombo. In: Geller, P. (ed). Built Environment: Design,
Management and Applications. New York: Nova Science Publishers.

Dayaratne, R. (2010). An Insight into The Asian Streets: Streets in Sri Lanka and their
Transformations. In: Kiang, H.C., Liang, L. B., & Limin, H. (eds.) On Asian Streets and
Public Space. Singapore: Nus Press, pp. 63–78.

De Silva, G. (2017) Role of International and National Standards in Improving Quality of Life in
Urban Environments in Sri Lanka. Cities People Places: An International Journal on Urban
Environments. 2(1). doi: 10.4038/cpp.v2i1.15.

Department of Architecture, Universitas Islam Indonesia. (n.d.) Morphogenesis of Informal

Settlements. [Video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk7VV576-8o&t=2134s
[Accessed 9th October 2021].

Dilini, G. & Coorey, S. (2014) Relevance of Threshold Spaces in Low-income Communities of

Colombo for Sustaining Social Ties, International Conference on ‘Cities, People and
Places’. Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Douglas, M (1996) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London:
Routledge.

Dovey, Kim, Tanzil Shafique, Matthijs van Oostrum, and Ishita Chatterjee. "Informal settlement is not a
euphemism for'slum': what's at stake beyond the language?." International Development Planning
Review 43, no. 2 (2021).

Gunetilleke, N. & Cader, A. (2005) Urban Poverty in Sri Lanka. Colombo. Center for Poverty
Analysis. https://www.cepa.lk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Urban-Poverty-in-SL-07.pdf
[Accessed 2nd March 2022].

Hulugalle, H. A. J. (1965) Centenary Volume of the Colombo Municipal Council 1865-1965.

Colombo, Colombo Municipal Council.

Israel, J. I. (1995) The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477-1806. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.

Jagoda, D. (n.d.) Sustainable Housing Development for Urban Poor in Sri Lanka:
Recommendations for the Improving Relocation Housing Projects in Colombo.
https://www.hdm.lth.se/fileadmin/hdm/alumni/papers/ad2000/ad2000-14.pdf
[Accessed 7th December 2021].

Karachi Urban Lab. (n.d.) Dr. Danesh Jayatilaka's Talk on Underserved Communities in Colombo at
CCUVN Workshop's Day 2. [Video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGpx0zQqHzY
[Accessed 27th September 2021].

Karaman, Ozan. "Resisting urban renewal in Istanbul." Urban Geography 35, no. 2 (2014): 290-310.

Lakshman, I. M., Alikhan, M. M., & Azam, A. (2019) Finding ‘Reason to Stay’ amidst issues of
well-being: A Case Study of Two Underserved Communities in Colombo. Center for
Migration Research and Development.
http://www.cmrd.lk/en/publications/working_papers/wp2019_01.pdf [Accessed 7
Th December 2021].

López-Morales, Ernesto. "Gentrification in the global South." City 19, no. 4 (2015): 564-573.

Marshall, R. (2003) Emerging Urbanity: Global Urban Projects in the Asia Pacific Rim. London &
New York: Routledge.

McFarlane, C. (2012) Rethinking Informality: Politics, Crisis, and the City.

Planning Theory & Practice. 13(1), 89-108. doi: 10.1080/14649357.2012.649951

Munasinghe, J. (2014) Regaining the Garden City of the East: A Critical View upon the Current
Developments in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Shanghai Urban Planning Review. 6, 86-93.

Panditharatna, B. L. A. (1963) A Critical Review of Plans for the Development of Colombo City
and Some Trends in Planning. Ceylon Journal of Historical & Social Studies. 7 (2),
111-213.

Purcell, Mark. "A new land: Deleuze and Guattari and planning." Planning Theory & Practice 14, no. 1
(2013): 20-38.

Rajapaksa (2010) Mahinda Chintana: Vision for the Future.

https://www.preventionweb.net/files/mahinda_chintana_vision_for_the_future_eng%5
B1%5D.pdf [Accessed 2nd March 2022].

Ramaswamy, D. (2005) Thresholds and Transitions: In Between the Public and Private Realm.
Master’s Thesis. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Ratnayake, A. B. (2016) Remembering the Castle Hotel. Roar Media.

https://roar.media/english/life/culture-identities/remembering-castle-hotel [Accessed
2nd March 2022]
Ron M., Andrew C., Arie, C. & Peggy, A. (2016) The Study of Slums as Social and Physical
Constructs: Challenges and Emerging Research Opportunities. Regional Studies, Regional
Science. 3(1), 399-419. doi: 10.1080/21681376.2016.1229130.

Roy, A. (2005) Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning,

Journal of the American Planning Association. 71(2), 147-158. doi: 10.1080/01944360508976689.

Ruming, Kristian. "Post‐political planning and community opposition: asserting and challenging
consensus in planning urban regeneration in Newcastle, New South Wales." Geographical research 56,
no. 2 (2018): 181-195.

Sandercock, L. (2005) Out of the Closet: The Importance of Stories and Storytelling in Planning
Practice. In: Stiftel, B. & Watson, V. (eds.) Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning 1.
London: Routledge, pp.299-321.

Sassen, S. (1991) The Global City: New York, London and Tokyo. New Jersey: Princeton University
Press.

Steinbrink, Malte, Christoph Haferburg, and Astrid Ley. "Festivalisation and urban renewal in the Global
South: socio-spatial consequences of the 2010 FIFA World Cup." South African Geographical Journal=
Suid-Afrikaanse Geografiese Tydskrif 93, no. 1 (2011): 15-28.

Acknowledgements:
The authors would like to thank Prof. Dushko Bogunovich, Dr. Eve Stirling, Dr. Kate Scott,
Dr. Nishat Awan, John Walsh, Joshua Yee Aung Low, Nusrat Jahan Mim, Paul Doorly and Roshni
De Bond for their editing guidance and advice.