The Planners' City
The Construction of a Town Planning Perception of Colombo
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4138869 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nihal Perera (Ball State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 57-73 |
| Publication date | 2008-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning A Economy and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0308-518X • E-ISSN: 1472-3409 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1068/a3987 |
| OpenAlex | W2118477643 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 28 |
The cities that administrators administer, planners plan, and scholars examine are perceptions that represent the absolute city 'that is out there'. This paper narrates how a new perception of the city based on British town planning, modified within the Empire, was established in Colombo, the former capital of Sri Lanka. It focuses on the interpretation and representation of physical realities in Colombo using the norms imported through the Housing Ordinance of 1915 and later the town planning discourse. The ordinance problematic the living environments of the poor residents, requiring solutions that were not available in Colombo. Instead of solving these, the colonial/imperial planner Patrick Geddes, and the others who followed him, carried town planning to Colombo and kept rewriting its history. The new perception of the city focused the attention of the authorities on a capitalist city, which was lain over the colonial city, marginalizing the poor. In this way the colonial planners taught the Ceylonese urban authorities and planners how to perceive and act on the city from a town planning vantage point. The discourse was not directly imposed or imported, but negotiated between many agencies including the (British) municipal authorities of Colombo, the colonial government, colonial/imperial planners, the newspapers, and other stakeholders. Many changes to this perception were introduced in Sri Lanka after independence, but they do not represent any substantial cultural questioning of this discourse. This is the contribution of this study
Civil engineering · Colonialism · Empire · Newspaper · Perception · Planner · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Urban planning · Engineering · Law · Psychology · Public Administration · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · Urban and Rural Development Challenges · Urban Planning and Governance
Post-colonial cultural diplomacy and international planning knowledge circulation
World-class as a provincial construct
Provincializing planning
The geo-biographies of spatial knowledge
Patrick Geddes in India
Planning as a Principle of Vision and Division
Southern Theory without a North
Governing the Contaminated City
Ordinary Urban Spaces
Voices of decline
Colonising Egypt
Urban Fortunes
Colonial Urban Development
This City Which is Not One
Postcolonial Urbanism
Modern Dreams
Mapping an Empire
Planning Theory and the City
Thinking about Cities as Systems
Indigenising the Colonial City
Defying Disappearance
Town Planning, Segregation and Indirect Rule in Colonial Nigeria
Town planning and garden cities in the British colonial empire 1910–1940
Tiananmen square and the politics of place
Collaborative Planning in Perspective
Negotiating Urban Conflicts
The Urbanization Process in the Third World
The Cultural Role of Cities
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2026 (19) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |