Built on Sand: A Review of Colombo’s Urban Regeneration Project

By Colombo Urban Lab

NOVEMBER 12, 2024 | Colombo Urban Lab

November 12, 2024: Colombo Urban Lab’s latest report “Built on Sand: A Review of Colombo’s Urban Regeneration Project” does a deep dive into one of Sri Lanka’s key post-war infrastructure projects – the Urban Regeneration Project by the Urban Development Authority.

The Government of Sri Lanka invested LKR 60 billion (USD 447 million taking the average exchange rate from 2010 – 2018) on the URP till 2018. In addition to budget allocation, a public debenture in the amount of LKR 10 billion (USD 88.5 million) was issued in the local capital market in 2010 to finance the initial phase of the URP. This means by 2018, the URP had cost the country twice as much as the Mattala International Airport and four times the cost of the Lotus Tower. The financing model of the URP as well as the overall project has been questionable from the beginning, with inadequate information disclosure to date around any feasibility studies, market research, alternatives analysis that led to its conceptualisation. The UDA continues to build these high-rise complexes in Colombo, now with a USD 200 million loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The URP primarily sought to relocate those living in “slums, shanties and other types of dilapidated housing” in Colombo to “modern houses”. More than a decade since the URPs inception, this report revisits some of the promises made at the outset of the programme such as better housing, better livelihood opportunities and better living conditions. Is the URP, like some other government led projects, yet another manifestation of modernity for the sake of modernity? Was better housing conditions for the urban poor really the goal of the project?

This report covers the dispossession and lived realities of the relocated communities in the high-rises, looks at the financing of the URP – including findings of Auditor General’s reports, reports from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and other publicly available material, and the status of the ‘liberated’ lands in Colombo today.

Read the full report here.

CSF

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